Throughout their adventure, players create their own abilities by building vehicles for Banjo to pilot over land, sea and air. Vehicle parts, which range from simple devices such as engines and wheels to more unusual equipment such as springs and egg guns, are earned and collected throughout the game. Players use their imagination to combine parts in any order to create whatever vehicle they choose
GenrePlatformers
Platforms xbox360
DEVELOPER Rare | PUBLISHER Codemasters | RELEASE DATE
Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts Reviews xbox360
giantbomb.com review
Funny writing and varied game worlds are all well and good, but it’s the vehicle-building feature that really sets Banjo apart from other character-driven action games. Make no mistake: This is not a platformer, certainly not in the style of the old Banjo games. You can run and jump, climb on ledges, and walk tightropes–and there’s a good number of collectible notes to jump around collecting–but almost all of your traveling and mission action will be done in vehicles.
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1up.com review
The combination of a surprisingly lengthy single-player game and a robust multiplayer mode make this one game that just about anyone can enjoy. While the challenges get a little repetitive, the ability to create and operate custom vehicles — both online and off — make Nuts & Bolts a unique, entertaining spin on the everyday platformer.
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gamestyle.com review
due to its relatively poor sales.It’s a shame that Nuts & Bolts is so overlooked and undervalued, as it it genuinely brilliant, and shows that Rare does have what it takes to make a classic, even if they misjudge their audiences a little bit. With a little bit of tightening here and pruning there, they could have had a bonafide classic on their hands, Microsoft’s answer to Mario Galaxy and LittleBigPlanet combined. It doesn’t quite reach those lofty heights, but it stands proudly at their feet, unafraid to do its own thing.
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videogamer.com review
Once the ball has been placed on the correct dome, a strange computer terminal structure rises from the ground and a series of doors are opened, giving you access to the first game world. Each game world has numerous acts, with each act containing a number of Jiggy Games. Complete a game within a certain time and you’ll earn a Jiggy (a jigsaw piece), which you then need to claim from Jiggy dispensers back in Showdown Town, before throwing them on your trolley and driving over to the central Jiggy bank to safely add them to your total.
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x360magazine.com review
No Synopsis Available
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game-boyz.com review
Famed game developer Rare Ltd. has revived one of its most beloved and successful franchises, Banjo-Kazooie. The latest release is the third instalment in the series. Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts should entice new and old fans alike as the famous bear and bird duo return in stunning high definition for a unique adventure of epic proportions. Rare always makes such beautiful and enjoyable games. Titles such as Golden Eye and Perfect Dark come to mind not to mention the popular Viva Piñata and Donkey Kong series. With such a rich background I was looking forward to the new Banjo experience.
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atomicgamer.com review
I’m not one of those Rare fans that have been keeping a vigil for the developer’s classic franchises; I could give a rat’s behind if we ever get another Killer Instinct, and I wasn’t even a big Banjo fan back in the day. So, my love of Rare’s latest may partially hinge on the fact that I wasn’t waiting for a sequel more in line with this franchise’s famed platforming roots. However, as a gamer who’s spent the last eight weeks blasting aliens, zombies, and insurgents (and believe me, I’m not complaining) in the season’s biggest titles, I was stoked to spend several hours in Nuts and Bolts’ lighter, imagination-pumping world, tinkering with insane vehicles just so a bear and bird could go paw (and wing) to toe with a witch. Tattoo that on your bicep, Mr. Moore.
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armchairempire.com review
Nuts & Bolts hangs the whole game around the vehicles and it does a very good job of it – many wide-open spaces with varied environmental and mechanical hazards. And even better for fans, many of the levels, while new, interesting, and nice to look at, offer callbacks to previous Banjo games and the characters that populated them.
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msxbox-world.com review
I absolutely love the music in Nuts & Bolts. It is so smoothly integrated into gameplay that it feels like a part of the game itself, rather than simply being a tune playing in the background. As you travel through different areas of Showdown Town, the music will seamlessly change instruments and pacing to match the area. The same can be said of each uniquely themed world you explore, so while there are very few unique pieces, there are so many variations and remixes of those pieces that the end result sounds like dozens and dozens and dozens of unique musical scores. It really is a marvelous game to listen to.
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palgn.com.au review
If you haven’t already got it, Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts should be on the top of your Christmas wish list. The game has the classic Banjo humour combined with an all-new gameplay direction. It features massive environments to explore, a well implement vehicle designing mode, and offers a range of different tasks to accomplish. The main drawback for some players is the game encourages you to take to take your time perfecting your vehicle for each individual challenge, which may be unappealing if you prefer diving straight into the action. There are also a few minor hindrances such as the frame rate dropping and the multiplayer mode not being completely satisfying. However, the adventure is fun and engaging enough to keep you playing for hours. Returning veterans should walk in open-mind though, Nuts & Bolts is nothing like the Nintendo 64 outings and will take some getting used to.
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gameplanet.co.nz review
L.O.G. Box is essentially the inside of a game console, where a number of disc spindles turn with all of Rare’s games over time, including Viva Pinata. There’s also Banjoland which is something of a theme park combined with a museum. Jiggoseum is a huge arena along the lines of ancient Rome. Rounding out the list is Terrarium of Terror and of course finally Spiral Mountain where the final missions will be completed.
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3djuegos.com review
No Synopsis Available
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gamearena.com.au review
No Synopsis Available
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meristation.com review
No Synopsis Available
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planetxbox360.com review
There’s not much more that needs to be said when it comes to story. L.O.G. is tired of Banjo and Grunty’s bickering and sets up a series of challenges to settle things once and for all. Your job is to finish the challenges; Grunty’s job is to stop you. After this, the game jumps off into the kind of surrealist platforming and exploration you’ll remember from old school platform gaming. No one asks why Mario gets big after he eats mushrooms, or why he throws fireballs with flowers. Banjo-Kazooie plays much the same way with musical notes as currency and collecting jigsaw pieces to unlock levels. There are pigs and rhinos walking around towns and giant scarf runways in ice levels. Coupled with this whimsical world is a self-aware, tongue-in-cheek attitude. Rare knows that cartoony platformers get picked last for dodgeball in school nowadays, so it’s determined not to take itself seriously. Each gaming world has a TV show introduction of each of the characters involved, and constantly references itself as a video game.
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ign.com review
While I did spend more time in Showdown Town than any of the individual game worlds while playing Nuts & Bolts, that’s primarily because I became obsessed with finding, unlocking, and purchasing every vehicle part so I could create the perfect rides.
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gameshark.com review
Kazooie is given a wand and complains about not being able to do special moves like she had in the other games. The wand serves mostly two purposes. The first is it can lift and move objects so you can drop them in the tray on your vehicles. The other purpose is as a weapon to defeat enemies. Banjo still has a health bar, although it isn’t readily seen via the HUD.
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game-over.com review
Overall, Banjo Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts is an excellent game that gives the series a long-overdue overhaul. Rare has packed it to the brim with gameplay options, giving it a lot of replay value, and allowing it to be enjoyed in either short spurts or longer, more in-depth play sessions. The amount of freedom given to the player is surprising for an all-ages game, and while the more intricate parts of the game’s design may baffle younger players, it still provides an experience that can be enjoyed at a basic level by anyone. At just $40, Nuts and Bolts is an incredible value.
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worthplaying.com review
Sadly, not everything in Banjo’s world is super slick, as there are a few annoying issues that crop up, and they do so in a nasty way. When everything works as it should, the Nuts and Bolts experience is top flight, but when it hits a snag, the game quickly goes from "fun" to "frustrating" in a flash. The biggest problem is the way in which you pick up items. Instead of simply picking them up, you use a tether to move them around the world. The tether is extremely imprecise, making it nearly impossible to place an item exactly where you want it. If there is a group of items, it also has a habit of moving from one to the next with just the slightest movement. As a result, it’s not uncommon to attempt to grab one item and grab the item next to it instead.
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gameplayer.com.au review
No Synopsis Available
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gamingexcellence.com review
Other than the vehicle system there isn’t anything else to talk about with Banjo-Kazooie. Mediocre graphics, mediocre music that seem to be remixes of older themes from previous titles and, well just general mediocrity make for a title that’s hard to recommend. This is one of those rare games that isn’t horrible but has almost nothing to really praise. It just kind of subsists in its own weird video game niche. I suppose that’s got to count for something, right?
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telegraph.co.uk review
Unfortunately, while building your vehicles is a lot of fun, Nuts & Bolts begins to unravel once you take them out for a spin. Handling can be incredibly frustrating, with even the fairly weighty cars difficult to control. The slightest nick of anything in the environment can send you spinning out, turning over or, in some extreme cases, getting stuck on fallen pieces of scenery.There’s still enjoyment to be had out of building a crazy car and thrashing it around the game worlds, but Nuts & Bolts relies far too heavily on the player making their own entertainment, failing to provide the challenges that matches the player’s imagination. The tasks which make up the meat of the game tend to range from a succession of tedious circuit races, excruciating fetch-quests and frustrating shooting galleries.
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totallygn.com review
So catching up on things since Banjo Tooie, the Bear and the Bird have gone to seed � scratching their butts and resting on their laurels while getting porky on junk food, their past glory days are far behind them. But an insidious character known as The Lord of Games has other ideas. Rather than letting Banjo and Kazooie live out their retirement as couch potatoes, L.O.G puts them both on a slimfast diet and pits them against their age-old enemy, the villanous witch Grunthilda (now reduced to nothing more than a yakking skull).
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wired.com review
The issue is that none of the games you play with these vehicles are that much fun. Racing laps around the levels versus other goofy contraptions is either frustrating or boring or both. Picking up passengers around the levels and bringing them to the exit, pushing soccer balls into a net, plugging up water pipes with giant nutshells… Rare has thought of a whole bunch of different things to do with the concept, but nothing ever pays off.
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