QnD Review: Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts

Platform:

• Xbox 360

What price and where:

• £13.95 eBay UK (+2.95 postage)

In short:

• Return of Rare's old Nintendo 64 videogame heroes from 1998.

QnD Review:
They're cute. They're old and overweight. And they're back.

Personally, back in late 90's, I wasn't a great platformer or Super Mario clone fan. But these days, with work, kids, dogs and all that silly stuff taking all my time I can appericiate easygoing games that I can just pick, play for a while and then drop when the need arises. Banjo-Kazooie: N&B is a game just like that.

Sure, if you want to delve into the game by building your own vehicles to the last detail, you can spend a considerable amount of time just there. But if you want to jump in and do some puzzle solving, jumping or driving around in a silly vehicle that handles like dough on wheels - that's here too.

Don't get me wrong; this isn't going to be a classic by a mile, but it's still entertainment - and if the price is right, that's good...

The good:

• easy gameplay
• Rare's take on old characters is sarcastically funny
• graphically "nice" - not full of eye-candy, but colorful and has a fitting theme
• cheap for such a new game
  

The bad:

• the vehicle designing could be better - a lot better, and more fun
• sometimes it's not really clear what you're supposed to do, or more likely what you can do in a given gameworld.
  

Score:

• price: 8
  
• graphics: 7.5
  
• sound: 7.5
  
• gameplay: 8.5
  
• story: 8.5

TOTAL: 8