Banjo's Got Wheels

Published November 18, 2008

It's been long years since Rare's flagship duo Banjo and Kazooie last took to paw and wing to thwart the malignant witch Gruntilda's nefarious plans. Since that time our heroes have enjoyed an extended respite from heroics, growing fat and happy in the process.

If you can dream it, you can make it.

Enter the Lord of Games (LOG), a robot auteur specializing in video games, whose very face seems to be made up of a game of Pong frozen in time. Long fed up with what it believes to be Banjo and Kazooie's second-class mascot status, LOG is determined to put them back through their paces in Banjo Kazooie® Nuts & Bolts for Xbox 360®.

The real genius behind Nuts & Bolts is the ability to
create nearly any vehicle your mind can imagine
from the bits and pieces you find in the game.

To this end, LOG has resurrected Gruntilda and pitted witch against bear and bird in a series of challenges to see who may go free and who will spend eternity in toil in LOG's video game factory.

Mechanical Innovation
Not only have our heroes grown lazy over time but their heroic skills have atrophied. On their own, they're simply incapable of completing LOG's required tasks, and so they must turn to the aid of self-made vehicles to help them in their quest.

In Nuts & Bolts, nearly every challenge requires the use of a vehicle to complete. Whether it's a simple race to a finish line, a mad dash to fling super-heated volcanic boulders into the sea to cool down, or carefully navigating the bumps, hills, sludge, and water in time to defuse a ticking time bomb strapped to the back of your tractor, the challenges on display in Nuts & Bolts all require inventive use of your vehicles, and inventive vehicles to boot.

Nutty Acres awaits.

The Creative Process
The game does grant you the use of a few basic vehicles along with a number of pre-made chassis you can modify, but the real genius behind Nuts & Bolts is the ability to create nearly any vehicle your mind can imagine from the bits and pieces you find in the game.

Using just the basic pieces provided initially (cubes, panels, corners, wedges, etc.) along with engines, seats, and wheels, you can build both elegantly simple and absurdly complex vehicles. The process of building from scratch is quite literally child's play. Grasping the essentials and beginning to build working machines takes just minutes.

For example, when greeted with the challenge that required me to deposit several glowing hot boulders into the sea, I built a combination bulldozer/storage truck with a long flat scraper in front designed to slide under the boulders, forcing them against a series of short wedges, which in turn sent them tumbling into a large flat storage bin. I could then carry them securely to the water.

Of course, throughout your adventures you'll find boxes filled with new parts just begging to be put to use. If you can create some stellar machines in the early going, the possibilities once you've been collecting parts for a while are staggering.

Sheeeee's baaack!

Showdown Town
Like previous Banjo games, Nuts & Bolts features a sprawling, gorgeous hub world densely packed with characters and collectibles. Showdown Town is where Banjo and Kazooie can access the various game worlds where LOG's challenges await, track down notes (the game's currency), uncover crates filled with new parts, and visit characters, including Humba Wumba who sells vehicle parts, and Boggy the gym owner who teaches our heroes some of their long-forgotten abilities.

You can also climb out of the driver's seat and onto your feet to enjoy a bit of classic Banjo Kazooie platforming to get at all the hundreds of odds and ends scattered throughout the city. It's a welcome change of pace and a nod to the series' much-loved roots.

Test O Track
Building vehicles is great fun, but you're going to want some confidence that they'll work as planned before you head into a game world to pit them against a particular challenge. The Test O Track at Mumbo's Motors offers you the chance to put your new creation through the ringer to see how it fares.

The Test O Track isn't a mundane circular track. It has all sorts of surfaces, including rocky ground to test all-terrain capabilities, water for your sea-based craft, as well as cement, ice, and ramps to name just a few of its features. Hours of fun can be had testing out newfangled ideas on the test track.

Classic platforming elements are still in the game.

Record Time
While you can often use basic vehicles to complete many of the challenges, the reason for crafting unique vehicles is to beat the challenge in record time. Setting records will earn you better in-game rewards, but more importantly for many, you'll also place higher on that challenge's unique leaderboard.

Every challenge in the game boasts a worldwide Xbox LIVE® leaderboard, so the moment you achieve victory, you can see just how you stack up against your friends and gamers around the world.

Share the Love
Building rare and exotic vehicles from the ground up is reward in and of itself, but in Nuts & Bolts, you can choose to share your precious blueprints with friends and random players alike over Xbox LIVE. It's a brilliant touch that brings the community together in a spirit of inventiveness as you show off your own engineering skills while profiting from the efforts of others as well.

Developer Rare has accomplished the near impossible with Banjo Kazooie Nuts & Bolts. They have taken a beloved franchise and transformed it entirely while retaining its core charm, personality, and many of the fundamental concepts that drive the gameplay. In short, Nuts & Bolts is as much a Banjo Kazooie game as any of its predecessors, despite having its foundation brilliantly turned upside down. Bravo, Rare!

Article by Ryan Treit