The bear and bird's original N64 adventure.
I never owned this one back during its time. Yeah, yeah, I'm sure some of you would consider that to be blasphemy, but what can I say? I actually never even heard of it, but this was before the widespread days of the Internet, and I never heard anyone talk about it. It wasn't until I started collecting that I bought this game. I completed it then, but I haven't really played it since that time.
Some may call this game an evolution of Super Mario 64, which is true in some ways. To me, it's quite different, and feels more like an adventure game. That's no criticism of the game, it's more like an observation. Banjo doesn't really have any spectacular jumps or much variety in that area, so it doesn't contain much in the way of pure platforming action. The worlds are quite open, with a number of tasks to accomplish, which can often be completed in any order you choose. This is a pretty big deviation from the more clear-cut goals of the "go from point A to point B" structure that a platformer typically has, but it works.
Starting up the game, the first thing that hit me was how catchy the music is. I'm surprised I had forgotten about it in the first place, and it's stuck in my head as I write this. There's no way to skip the opening tutorial of sorts, which I wanted to do because I still remembered the moves. After that, I jumped into Mumbo's Mountain wondering if I could complete it within the half-hour that I planned on playing. As I wandered around the level collecting everything and finding the new moves, it was all coming back to me. I rounded up the final notes and got the last jiggy, then exited the world at the forty-minute mark for playing the game.
I'd forgotten how enjoyable this game can be. I'm actually tempted to continue with it, but I'm not sure. What really brings this game down is that it has one too many collectibles. Mostly, that would be the one-hundred notes on each level that annoy me. Since they must all be collected in the same run, it can be a real chore in the later levels which have a few places with cheap deaths. There's also the Jinjos, I hate those little colourful creatures.
Still, I've missed this game. I've completed it just the one time when I bought it, so it is still kind of fresh on my mind. Forty minutes wasn't enough, I kept going and went on to Treasure Trove Cove. There were a few jiggies here that I remembered being annoying... but I actually didn't have much trouble collecting all of the jiggies and notes. I think this one took about forty minutes as well. It's got me wonder though... The reason I haven't tried playing this game again is because of the parts that I found to be a chore. What if that would no longer be the case? Maybe now that I know almost everything about the game, or would remember it when I got to that part, perhaps it wouldn't be so much trouble on a second time through?
Of course, there's also that playing through this will delay my quest to play every game, which I am already pretty behind on. I guess I'll just have to live with that. Banjo-Kazooie is a well-crafted platformer/adventure game that would please fans of either game type. It has a few small flaws which are now more apparent than ever, but it stands the test of time.
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