So, after over twenty hours, numerous obscenities and a little bit of gamer rage over a major instance of arbitrary injustice, I have finally beaten Banjo-Kazooie. The overall impression? If I'm honest, a little bit of disappointment, a little bit of relief. I may have been expecting a bit much. Banjo has been lauded from most corners of games journalism and the internet as a classic, and I'm sorry, but it just isn't. It may have been a shining example of the genre when it first dropped fifteen years ago, but today, not so much.
An admission: I never played Banjo-Kazooie when it first arrived. I was a PlayStation owner for most of the late nineties, and by the time I finally got my paws on an N64, prices for Banjo had gone through the roof. I eventually got the game with a free download code when it was released for XBLA a couple of years ago. But, shamefully, I let it languish in the depths of the hard drive until I began living out of boxes a week or two ago, having packed almost everything I own for a move that has wound up being delayed. So with no physical games to play, I began to plumb said depths of hard drive and play some of my XBLA backlog.
After polishing off the thoroughly satisfying Alan Wake's American Nightmare, Banjo was next on the list, and I dove into it with gusto. The first two thirds of the game were a lot of fun, but at about the point of Rusty Bucket Bay, the game started to become a slog. Eventually I got to the point where the only reason I was continuing was to not let the hours invested up to that point go to waste. Banjo-Kazooie, for the most part, is a good game but it's held back from greatness by a couple of regrettable flaws.
I liked
The art direction: As I've said before, the quality of a game's art will directly affect how well it ages. Banjo-Kazooie is fifteen years old, and it looks it. But that is not to the game's detriment. It's bold, chunky and colourful, and remains very easy on the eye, despite the well documented texturing problems of its original platform. The game world is coherent and absolutely everything looks like it belongs there.
The personality: Everything has a face. Everything. From the witches broom, to the cauldrons scattered around Grunty's Lair, to the vegetables hopping around spiral mountain. On top of that, each world has it's own unique cast, each with it's own unique voice and personality. It gives the whole game a whimsical, storybook feel that makes it a pleasure to spend time with.
The first two thirds: Banjo-Kazooie began as a very enjoyable game, and was balanced just nicely enough that its flaws didn't get in the way of the fun. Sadly, upon arriving at Rusty Bucket Bay, that all changed. The difficulty suddenly spiked, and the controls, camera and collision detection just couldn't give the accuracy that the higher difficulty required. Where once the game was challenging, now it was needlessly difficult and the fun just drained away.
I disliked
The camera: Let's get this out of the way first. The camera is bloody awful. Yes, the game was developed in the nineties, but it's bad even when compared to other games of that vintage. The main problem is the alarming regularity with which it gets stuck on the scenery. Or it will swap sides at random, inopportune moments, causing poor Banjo to fall to his death. Added to this is the fact that the camera seems to have a minimum amount that it will pan at the touch of the right stick. This meant that I couldn't pan the camera the tiny bit that was needed to make sure the perspective was right for some of the more difficult jumps later in the game.
The loose controls: In and of itself, this wouldn't be a problem. There are plenty of games out there that have loose controls that feel great, and for the most part, Banjo-Kazooie is one of them. However, later levels need a level of precision that the controls just aren't able to give, which makes already difficult levels even harder.
The iffy collision detection: Again, not much of a problem until the later stages of the game. But by then it combines with the bad camera and overly loose controls to infuriating and maddening effect. I lost count of the times Banjo fell to his death because of a deadly combination of a dodgy edge and a slightly less than perfect jump.
The collectibles: One hundred jigsaw pieces, nine hundred musical notes, forty five Jinjoes, red feathers, gold feathers, mumbo tokens, eggs, caterpillars. Need I say more?
Being dumped on the ground floor of Grunty's lair after loading: Would it really have been so hard to just start the game from the last floor I was on? Traipsing through the castle every time I started the game was an exercise in needless frustration.
The quiz at the end: Arbitrary and annoying. It should not take three hours to cross a room that it would take five seconds to cover if there wasn't a boardgame in the way. The idea in itself isn't a bad one. But instant death on certain squares if you get a question wrong is just bad design. After over thirty retries I almost put the game down and deleted it.
Despite all the ranting though, and the fact that the last three levels were the kind drudgery that would make even Sisyphus feel sorry for you, for the most part, I still enjoyed my time with Banjo-Kazooie. It was whimsical and nice, even when it was testing my patience to the very limit. It wasn't the classic game I was looking for, but I'm glad I played it. It's sort of a badge of honour to say you hundred-percented Banjo Kazooie, and now that I know why, I'm proud to wear it.
I shall now be spending a bit of time with Beyond Good and Evil HD before starting Banjo-Tooie. Hopefully Rare will have tightened things up a bit for the sequel.
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