After many years of silence since Rare’s acquisition by Microsoft, Banjo and Kazooie are back for their third home console offering. Much has changed since we last saw the bear and bird combo in 2000’s Banjo-Tooie. The characters’ designs have been drastically altered, and the gameplay is extremely different, but Rare hits the nail on the head, delivering a game that’s not only great to play, but is also wildly funny to boot. Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts also fills a long-standing void in the Xbox 360 catalogue by delivering a game that people of all ages can enjoy.

Nuts & Bolts takes place roughly eight years after Gruntilda’s defeat at the Isle O’ Hags in Banjo-Tooie. A quick black and white retrospective brings players up to date on the duo’s previous heroics, before showing them in their modern incarnation – two overweight bludgers that have done little beyond eating pizza and playing video games since they last saved Spiral Mountain. Grunty (well, her disembodied head, at least) makes her way to Spiral Mountain to get her revenge on Banjo and Kazooie. They’re about to fight when they are interrupted by the Lord of Games, who graciously informs them that nobody really cares about either party anymore, and that rather than settling their score through another pointless collect-a-thon, he offers them the opportunity to compete in a series of challenges of his own. The winner will get the deed to Spiral Mountain, the loser will be forced to work in LOG’s game factory. LOG restores everyone back to their original form (sans Banjo and Kazooie’s fancy moves), and transports everyone to Showdown Town.

Humour is the thing that gives Nuts & Bolts its edge. Rare isn’t afraid to pull punches, even at themselves. It starts from the moment the game begins too – there are jabs at the type of games that used to be popular in the 90s, snickering about Rare’s recent failures and the lacklustre storytelling of their old games, references to old TV shows, and even a few putdowns at the expense of the Xbox 360. New characters feature amusing designs that are far more imaginative than the “google-eyed object” approach that defined the first Banjo – for example the Lord of Games, a tall cloaked figure with a TV playing Pong for a face, who claims that he is the creator of every video game series ever made. The writing is well tuned and the wit is sharp – honestly something I didn’t really expect to come from the same company that produced Perfect Dark Zero.

Rare also prove that they’re still masters of the Xbox 360 hardware, producing one of the most vibrant and colourful worlds on the system. Showdown Town is said to be one of the largest worlds the company has ever built, yet it is teeming with life and things to occupy your time. Each of the game’s seven stages is also really quite large, but all feature some nice little touches to make sure they fit with the game’s overall theme (along with paying a little homage to The Truman Show). The characters bear a more stylised look than previous, but the level of detail is pleasing and the quality of the animation is fantastic. Also of note is Grant Kirkhope’s musical score (his final for Rare) which is comprised of a pleasing set of melodies that fits in perfectly with the game world.


Nuts & Bolts shifts the gameplay focus from platforming to vehicle-based action. There are still a few little nods to the Banjo games of old –platforming, tightrope walking and collecting notes, but the vast majority of your time is spent in vehicles. Banjo and Kazooie have none of their original moves – a fact which Kazooie constantly complains about (having been given a wrench as a replacement). At first, the vehicle controls seem awkward – you basically start out with a glorified shopping trolley. Vehicles are a slave to real word physics, so you need to shape your designs to accommodate that. Once you’ve explored the world a bit, you’ll find some decent parts, and can scoot off to Mumbo Jumbo’s garage to build something a little more workable. The vehicle builder is really intuitive and insanely flexible – a necessity given the wide variety of missions you’ll undertake. Your initial vehicles are going to look crazy and handle bizarrely, but once you get the right parts, you can build some great stuff. Vehicles aren’t just attached to land – you can build all matter of sea and air vehicles too.

Collecting jiggies is still the main objective, but they’re now earned through completing missions in each of the seven game worlds. Each world has a lot to offer, but Banjo Land is the highlight – it’s a mish-mash of all of the different levels from the original Banjo-Kazooie, with a whole lot of jokes at the original game’s expense. The game’s tasks never seem to become mundane – you’ll be moving cargo, competing in checkpoint races, playing sports, destroying stuff and even competing in long jump contests. You’ll need a different type of vehicle to meet the needs of each mission; blueprints can be bought to give you pre-designed vehicles for each task, but it defeats the point, since you can have so much more fun building them yourself.

Like most of the Rare games of old, Nuts & Bolts has plenty of stuff to distract you from the main objective, along with extending the overall life of the game. While only 75 of the 131 jiggies are required to proceed to the final encounter, players can also earn rewards for performing about the par time for their objectives in each mission. These rewards are T.T Trophies, awarded to the duo by Trophy Thomas, a tiger which the game describes as an “overly competitive braggart”. T.T Trophies earn you more jiggies and vehicle parts. There are also a few side missions, and a hilarious sidescrolling game called “Hero Klungo Sssavesss teh World”, starring Grunty’s former assistant who left the witch to become a game developer in the last game. Players are looking at about 20 hours to see the majority of what Nuts & Bolts has to offer.

Aside from the single player game, Nuts & Bolts also has a fairly robust multiplayer mode, playable both online and off. The multiplayer mode recycles some of the missions from the single player game, but expands them to better suit multiple players. Most missions are centred around the racing and sports based objectives. Not all of the modes support custom vehicles, and it’s up to the host when they are allowed. Multiplayer is not as rewarding as the single player game, but Nuts & Bolts certainly not any worse off for including it.

Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts is a hilarious game with really inventive gameplay and gorgeous visuals. The sheer number of vehicles you can create with the game’s intuitive vehicle editor is amazing. The game worlds are fantastic, the missions are always compelling and surprisingly varied and there always seems to be something to do. It’s really accessible too, meaning that players of all ages can enjoy what it has to offer. Nuts & Bolts goes a long way towards showing that Rare is still one of the best console developers around.