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Home : Games : Previews : Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts
Banjo and Kazooie are taking it to the land, sea, and skies in this new innovative vehicular platformer for the Xbox 360. Our E3 08 hands-on impressions.
One of the big Xbox 360 exclusives that was on display at E3 this year was Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts, the first console version Banjo-Kazooie in eight long years. We managed to get some hands-on time with the game on the show floor and walked away extremely impressed with what was shown.
For those who haven’t been following Nuts and Bolts, it is a fairly large departure from the first two games in the Banjo series. Where the original Banjo game focused on the abilities of Banjo and Kazooie and how they cooperated as a team, Nuts and Bolts puts the focus almost entirely on vehicular platforming.
Throughout the game, Banjo will collect all kinds of mechanical parts that he can use to create unique vehicles that can be utilized for a variety of different situations. Some vehicles might be equipped to travel across water, some might be good for transporting items, some could be meant for speed, and others meant for combat purposes.
The demo that we played at E3 came with four challenges that each featured a specific vehicle or set of vehicles that were already designed for that challenge. One challenge had us delivering a talking block of ice to a destination at the top of a sloping hill. For this challenge we had three vehicle choices. One was a large square cage that moved slowly, but would ensure that the ice block had safe and easy passage to its destination.
Another was a fast moving vehicle with two protruding arms at the front. This vehicle could get the ice block up the slope much faster, but since it’s constantly bumping into the block, you run the risk of breaking it before getting it all the way up or knocking it off the slope. The final vehicle was a flying machine with a rope that could be attached to the ice block. Using this method allowed you to bypass going up the hill all together, but also causes you to move much slower than if you were to use either of the ground vehicles.
Another challenge put us behind the wheel of a buggy that had four springs on the bottom that enabled it to jump into the air. Our task here was first to jump through several rings strewn across the area by controlling how high we jumped. Once we got that down, the game then had us showing off a bit of our fancy side as it tasked us with doing backflips and barrel rolls by holding X and moving the right analog stick in a direction while in the air.
Our third challenge was a typical race that gave us a fast moving vehicle that could travel both on land and on water. It was a simple, but fun challenge that simply had us driving through checkpoints laid around all of Banjo Land.
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