It's a bear! It's a bird! It's...a bear with a bird in his backpack?
It angered me to no end when I tried to show my sister-in-law A Link to the Past, and she said she couldn't play it because it "looked like Pokemon". ARRRGHHHHHH! She was coming into the experience from her own vantage point, which compared the game to her existing template, which was Pokemon. She hadn't played too many retro games, and from her experience, the game looked like Pokemon, which is technically true. It angered me, however, because she was making a grievous error by anachronistically comparing A Link to the Past to Pokemon, rather than the other way around!
But now I understand. There was a shadow laying over my playthrough of Banjo-Kazooie, which is that I was constantly comparing it to its successor, Donkey Kong 64. I had to fight so hard to stop from thinking that Banjo-Kazooie was a carbon copy of DK64, when it was in fact the other way around.
As a result, and with a lot of effort, I have come to devalue the DK64 experience, and value the Banjo-Kazooie experience at a reasonable level, although I'm sure my bias still affects this review. Anyway, I'm going to try to review it like I'm playing it for the first time at launch, with a shiny new Nintendo 64 (for the record, I was playing the XBox One version on Rare Replay, although I've heard they're very similar, minus a few little tweaks).
Banjo-Kazooie was fun, but a bit too long, and featured a few dim spots on an otherwise good experience. Cut in the mold of the true masterpiece, Super Mario 64, Banjo-Kazooie is a 3D platformer which has you exploring a wide range of contained levels connected by an overworld, and unlocking new levels by getting collectibles in each level (stars in Super Mario 64, and puzzle pieces and music notes in Banjo-Kazooie). You play as bear and bird team Banjo and Kazooie, who use their combined talents to rescue Banjo's sister from the evil Gruntilda. Along the way, the duo will unlock new abilities that they will use to find new treasure to unlock subsequent levels along their path to Gruntilda.
When you can't be great, mimic the great. Super Mario 64 is just SO good. It's an instant classic and is better than any 3D platformer of the PS1/Saturn/N64 era. All as a launch title on N64. And Banjo Kazooie begs, borrows, and steals from Super Mario 64 with panache, offering a few little tweaks and improvements along the way. The controls are basically identical, with B punch, A jumping, Z crouching, Z+A doing a backflip, and A+Z doing a ground pound. Banjo Kazooie, however, allows you to get a few new abilities in addition to the standard Mario 64 fare, including shooting eggs, laying eggs, getting speedy shoes as well as shoes that enable you to walk on thorns and other hazards, becoming invincible, and flying. The flying in particular is improved from the clumsy Mario 64 interface. There are plenty of secrets to find along the way, and a wide range of levels to explore.
Banjo Kazooie's music is quite good (although it makes DK64 look very lazy due to the heavy degree of straight up theft of Banjo-Kazooie melodies and tones you find in DK64), and includes a very nice touch in which the music changes when you go underwater. The controls are very responsive and work nicely, although the hitboxes on Banjo's attacks can be unclear.
The world is huge and impressive, and while the graphics are a bit dated today, they hold up acceptably. The final boss fight was very fun and challenging, and I'll remember it fondly.
The game was not without it's negatives, though. Rather than the tightly focused levels of Mario, featuring it's focus on obtaining one star at a time, levels in Banjo-Kazooie focus so heavily on exploration and discovery that sometimes it's hard to know where to go next. This is particularly noticeable in moving from level to level, where it's sometimes necessary to go back to a previous floor to unlock a level, and then go a completely different place to enter the level. This is one great change in DK64 that I wish they would have thought of earlier. The placements of the levels and unlocks of levels are frequently so challenging and remote that I NEVER would have found them without a guide, particularly the unlock outside of Mad Monster Mansion (absolutely horrible design).
The game probably had 2-3 too many levels, and played itself about 10 hours too long. The last 5 or so levels are undertaken with a completely full kit for Banjo and Kazooie to upgrade, making their path between levels purely about obtaining completely arbitrary puzzle pieces and music notes, rather than about getting the duo the abilities they'll need to finish the game. This was another nice piece about DK64, which felt like you were unlocking new abilities constantly, and were only collecting gold bananas and regular bananas as an afterthought.
The ending board game (you'll know it if you've played it) is some of the worst level design I have ever seen. Good luck not tearing your hair out at the completely anti-climatic nature of this portion of the game.
Each level in Banjo Kazooie needed a boss. There were very few in the game, and in comparison to DK64's excellent boss design and execution Banjo-Kazooie is very lacking.
I know this game gets beat up a lot for its camera, and it was not great, but I don't think it was as bad as everyone says. But I would have thought they would have reworked it for the Xbox version, which they really didn't (as far as I can tell).
Anyway, it was a worthy playthrough, but flawed. If you like Mario 64 or Donkey Kong 64, I can guarantee you'll find something to enjoy in it, but it is probably not quite as good as either of those two games. I'd give it a contemporary review of 8.0, and a for the time review of 8.5.
Here's a teaser for my next console What I'm Playing, and I swear I'm working on the handheld one (very long game)!
-TRO
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