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Banjo-Tooie

Started by Double, March 26, 2009, 07:51:06 PM

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Double

March 26, 2009, 07:51:06 PM Last Edit: April 03, 2009, 09:13:42 AM by Phoenix Magnion
Now you may remember in the previous review I mentioned I never played this game and it wasn't very well reasonable for me to review it. Using those ancient dark powers I have formed an unholy alliance to have this done by a guest reviewer. Who's the guest? You should be able to figure it out.

Intro: ATTENTION DUELISTS MUGEN PEOPLE! MY HAIR HAS TAKEN OVER THIS REVIEWER TO ALLOW ME TO REVIEW A SHITTY GAME. DO NOT ATTEMPT TO ADJUST YOUR SET, BECAUSE THAT'S YOUR TV AND IT WOULD HAVE NO EFFECT ON YOUR COMPUTER. This game is the sequel to the somewhat popular N64 game Banjo Kazooie, this game is Banjo Tooie. Interestingly this game was flat out STATED as inevitable as the first games 100 % ending makes reference to certain items in the first you could only get with the second (Really Long Story made shorter: The game was to use the N64's limited internal memory to have people switch carts back and forth to exchange data between the two games, this apparently became impossible with the creation of the expansion pack, or Nintendo was worried about it causing system damage, either way it didn't happen). So people that played the first were obviously hyped for the sequel, sadly it may have been for the worst...

Gameplay: So you start up the game... knowing all the moves from the previous one!? What is this madness?! Games where you learn moves always have you inexplicably fall over a rock an somehow forget to use them all (HAI METROID PRIME 2 AND 3), surely this game will be amazing if you have all your old moves right? Right? WELL NO. Sadly the game needs you to learn new moves or there really won't be much point, this causes a great majority of the moves from the previous game to become more situational (the running shoes and wading boots which were ALREADY SITUATIONAL ENOUGH) or outdated (there is only one segment I can recall off the top of my head where you have to use Blue Eggs, as you get new types of eggs and once you have EXPLODING eggs you don't have much need for real ones). This doesn't even get us started with the new split ability which lets Banjo and Kazooie split up (because it always worked so wonderfully on Scooby Doo) and learn their own sets of moves. This leads to a whole lot of backtracking, but this isn't even the worst of it.

Transformations are back, this time now handled by a Native American stereotype Humba Wumba, and now all only cost one of the new magic items awesome! Well no. These transformations lead to a whole lot of backtracking and typically aren't fun, and to be fair they were pretty lame in the first one too.

But what of Mumbo the transforming guy from the first game? Well for one of the new magic items you can play as Mumbo! This is totally sweet huh isn't it?! No, it isn't the only reason to play as Mumbo is to use a spell in a few areas and then never use him again, if you could fight a boss or SOMETHING I would be a little warmer to this but it's basically yet another transformation, just not a literal one. Sadly this also leads to a lot of backtracking especially in the factory level and Hailfire Peaks.

Well I've told you how many different forms there are surely the underlying game must be good right? Well no you see this game was made after DK64, and some vestiges of item fetching are about. So guess what time it is? For each level there are:

-10 Jiggies: Your standard level entering item.
-100 Notes: Although they are now used as a form of currency and come in 1 package of 20 and 16 of 5.
-5 Jingos: More on these later
-3 Cheato Pages: Which are used to unlock cheats

But each level also has countless other items you must collect to get your Jiggies including, tickets, Burgers, Fries, fish, and Targitzan's Golden Relic Thingy (actually how the game refers to it). Well item fetching can be fun if done right, surely there are countless hoards of interesting enemies in your way... see the difficulty section for my thoughts on that. Jiggies work pretty much the same way as before but now filling in the puzzles to get to levels is less automatic, and is one of the few things the game actually improves upon its predecessor.

Well at least Notes and Jingos are permanent this time around... but they did change the way Jingos work, they are now independent of the level you are in and you get a Jiggy for completing a family. I.e. the Blue family will say have 3 members scattered through the game or something and after getting all 3 you would get it... incidentally the black family has the most, how the fuck did that get past quality control? I'm surprised the red ones are drunk, the brown ones don't try to steal your job and they don't even say anything about the driving abilities of the yellow ones. Oh, there are now EVIL Jinjos too that try and confuse you and attack you, this however is not a threat as you will realize that these Jingos can be shot with eggs and  take damage whereas the real Jinjos will have eggs fly through them... gee that seems familiar. I will give this evil Jingos credit for taking two hits to die, which makes them heavies compared to the other enemies, yes Spy-Heavies.

Well at least you'll go through epic platforming segments for Jiggies right? I'm afraid not always. Many are based on mindless mini-games, most of which involve you shooting at things. But hey there are bosses now! And even first person shooter sections that has got to be good right! Well I'll let the game have those they are probably the highlight of this fecal fest.

Now some Jiggies now take an obscene amount of time to get because the levels are all now connected in some form or another. For example in the fourth level, Jolly Roger's Bay some pigs want you to clean up a pool and make it warmer, easy as pie right? Well to do this you must:
-Go through a warp to a later level and turn off the toxic sewage.
-Go to the final level and knock of an ice cube to his violent doom in a volcanic spring in an earlier level, mind you this ice cube is sentient and this is a children's game.
-Go to the volcanic spring and use one of Banjo's abilities to walk on the floor underneath the water to trigger a switch causing the water to dump into the pool from before warming it, FINALLY netting you the Jiggy. In the previous game this would have been worth like THREE. Don't even get me started on the quest to get to the ice side train station of Hailfire Peaks.

Could it kill a platformer to have some PLATFORMING IN IT?! If I wanted mindless fetch quest I'D PLAY ZELDA AND SKIP TO THE ITEM TRADING SEQUENCES, if I wanted an FPS, I'D PLAY AN FPS, if I wanted a game with a lot of pointless transformations I'd shoot myself because it's that bad.

Oh and like its predecessor if you want to do anything over again you have to replay the game... except bosses you can fight those anytime you want in the games extras... which reminds me the game has multiplayer, but it's really basic.
⑤ out of ⑳

Music: The music is repetitive, it probably doesn't help that the games music was scored by the same dev team as Donkey KONG 64's. The only half way decent tracks are the boss themes, and even a few of those are pretty subpar. Well at least there isn't any rap music right? Amazingly there isn't any we actually lucked out on that one, yay! But there is one notably bad track, people who played the first Banjo Kazooie may remember that when you picked up Mumbo Tokens they made a sound effect... for some reason Rare went out of their way to make a song seemingly inspired by the sound effect, honest:

Whoever green lighted that needs to be shot with a nail gun in the genital region. Which isn't to say that the melody is the problem it sounds almost decent in its boss remix...

Also the annoying sound effects for voices continues but this is a N64 game and one with a lot of Nintendo support  (by which I mean Nintendo bitching at Rare to finish the game because they were still Nintendo's bitch back then) behind it so it's not that surprising there is no voice acting.
② out of ⑮

Full disclosure: I will admit to liking the Mr. Patch music but that's only because of how delightfully demented it sounds.

Translation: I THINK THIS SECTION IS A BULLSHIT CURVE INDUCING PIECE OF ASS AND AS SUCH AM NOT COUNTING IT.
RUDY GIULIANI RIDING A DISCO BALL OUT OF THREE TIME TRAVELING MARIACHIS

Length: This game is painfully long if you want to try and complete everything. As mentioned before some of the tasks for Jiggies now cross so many levels and require so much shit done they would end up taking as much time as like five from the previous game! This doesn't even count all the minor item collection you'll have to go through to especially the fucking Jingos. Lord help you if you try and get all the Cheato Pages (CANARY MARY). The game is so painfully long I'm giving it a perfect score... because penalizing a game for being too long doesn't make sense.
⑮ out of ⑮

Rehash Factor: As mentioned before all the moves from the previous game are back although this could be viewed a positive thing... if the new ones weren't so horrible. Spiral Mountain returns but the graphics were changed at the least. Besides that the only other thing really is that several character models are reused from the first game apparently to save time and effort. I have been told the various FPS areas are re-skins of multiplayer levels from the N64 game Goldeneye, as I have never played this game I cannot verify this (yeah I didn't play Goldeneye, shoot me), even so they aren't used for the same purpose as in this game they are used for single player shit so yeah I can't penalize it if I'm not sure.
⑫ out of ⑮

Plot: Grunty is now a ZOMBIE GOAST... err skeleton and she was set free by her evil sisters... who apparently took two years to get off their asses and DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT. She then kills Bottles for some reason with a giant laser attack... now if Grunty had this attack to begin with why didn't she use it in the last game? It is a mystery. So Banjo, Kazooie and Mumbo (YELL AT THE TOP OF LUNG AND) decide to avenge him, I guess. Grunty then plans to use her sisters evil machine named B.O.B. to... wait B.O.B.? Seriously? Well that must just be an accident I mean it's not like Rare is made of perverts. SO ANYWAYS MOVING ON, she uses it to kill the king of the Jingos named... Jingaling? Ok, was Rare really trying to fill this game with innuendos?



OH YOU HAVE GOT BE SHITTING ME.

Enough of Rare being filled with sickos, so Banjo and Kazooie meet Bottles Drill Sargent brother Jamjars (Get it? Jamjars are a type of bottle oh Rare you are SOOOOOO clever. What's next their niece Decanter?) who proceeds to teach them new moves and then they go through a series of item fetch nonsense they go and then beat up Grunty in her tank... because witches totally use tanks, they also can shoot giant laser be... I'll shut up now. They also resurrect Jingaling and Bottles and then play soccer with Grunty's head, honest. Oh ho ho ho, there are sorts of head related jokes I could make there, but I won't. They are great kickball players though, they do not even drop her head while kicking it around, that takes skill.

Strangely the sister Banjo and Kazooie had to prove they WERE BAD ENOUGH BEAR AND BIRD TO SAVE is completely missing from this game.
① out of ⑩

Difficulty: Suffering to a similar problem to what Magnion said doomed DK64, a lack of enemies. For the most part each area has a generic grunt enemy that tries to attack you with a giant club type object and maybe a few unique to that area but it's still so much less than what it could be. As mentioned earlier there are cheato pages and one of the earlier cheats you get (I think it's either the 3rd or 4th) lets you recover health by STANDING STILL. WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT BULLSHIT I MEAN GOD COULD THEY POSSIBLY MAKE THE GAME ANY EASIER BESIDES MAYBE PUTTING A GIANT "WIN THE GAME*" OPTION AT THE FILE LOAD SCREEN?! I will give the game credit for having a pretty epic final boss, but its impact is REALLY hurt by the aforementioned fact you CAN STAND STILL AND HEAL.
② out of ⑮

The only reason I've given difficulty ANY points is because of two words: CANARY MARY. If you're aware with video game terminology, Canary Mary uses Rubberband AI... evil rubberband AI, if you do not race her in JUST the correct manner she will accelerate so high you cannot possibly past her. All for a lousy Cheato Page that was shoved up her...

Total: 37/90 = 41 %

I think the Rehash Factor gives games too much of a curve. While rehashing in a game is a totally valid concern, a game can be totally original and still SUCK A PORCUPINES BALLS. Don't even get me started on translation, that's basically a free ten points these days. With that in mind here is an adjusted score that does not factor in Rehash Factor:

Adjusted Total: 25/75 = 33 %

This game was so bad it convinced me to stop playing platformers for years. So I set it on fire, didn't burn as well as Twilight though. To it's credit the only way a third game could be worse is if they threw in vehicle creation and races in addition to the item fetching, and I'm sure Rare isn't so retarded to do that.

Positive: ... HEY! LOOK BEHIND YOU! A THREE HEADED MONKEY!

Negative: If I had to pick a single WORST moment of the game it'd be the finding out that the Eggs and Ice Key teased at the last game were for shitty unlockables like a move that lets you slam Kazooie into the floor as an attack. While that may have been nice... there aren't enough enemies in the game to MAKE IT USEFUL.

*OH HO HO HO

MC2

Well at least there isn't any rap music right? Amazingly there isn't any we actually lucked out on that one, yay!

SHUT UP D:

Jesuszilla

Heh, just as many grammatical errors. Only this time it was mostly with punctuation and maybe one or two were other aspects of grammar.


That aside, I think I can explain the innuendos. I only rented Tooie, so I didn't play much of it, but what I did play, I knew something wasn't right. It felt like it was for a older audience almost. Could have been an increase in violence (the evil jinjos were pretty mean little fucks, seriously), I don't remember too well. But something inside me knew something about this wasn't right, and the innuendos shown in this review pretty much proved that. I'm almost much inclined to believe that the team that made Tooie also made Conker's Bad Fur Day, but to prove that, I'd have to look at all the names that worked on it, and screw that, I'm too lazy. Just a thought, a plausible one at that.


Just try to keep things peaceful.

Jango

If SBZ and Fusion were taped together, this is the review they would write.