5/5 ★ – jdraco's review of Banjo-Kazooie.

Now this is what the hell I’m talking about Banjo-Kazooie is a certified masterpiece This game is just an absolute adventure from start to finish, with so many memorable levels, memorable moments, and memorable characters This game is just such a complete package, and it just fires on so many fronts Like I was saying, almost every level in the game is memorable and extremely well designed Each level is filled with these distinct landmarks that make progression straightforward and incredibly seamless My favorite instance of this is Bubblegloop Swamp, which is filled to the brim with areas that stick out. You have the giant turtle named Tanktup, who gives you a jiggy if you use the beak buster attack on all of his limbs (he also does a hilarious scream sound effect every time, and it’s fantastic) But then also within this swamp, you have the wooden maze area, or the area where you have to fight the frogs, or the area with all the jump pads, or the giant alligator. Like I said, there are just so many distinct locations in these levels that make it so easy to navigate and kind of check off which locations you’ve explored And the exploration is incredible too; completing each level is such a breeze because you naturally come across damn near every collectible by just exploring everything each level has to offer And because of the amazing level design and all the distinct and interesting areas within each level, naturally, the player would just want to explore everything to soak up everything that each level has to offer It’s fantastic Every jiggy that you collect in this game is so varied, too. To get one jiggy, you might have to beat a mini-boss, or to get another one, you might just have to reach the highest point of a level, or maybe for another one, you have to follow a bunch of giant red X’s until you find a treasure And there are just so many more examples that I didn’t even list, because honestly, if I did, I would be here all day. You can genuinely tell, though, that the developers of this game put extreme passion into making sure that getting almost every jiggy was a unique experience in some way Some of my favorite jiggy's to get in this game too are the ones where you have to utilize Mumbo Jumbo and transform into different creatures to get them For instance, there’s this giant walrus in Freezeezy Peak who won’t give Banjo a jiggy because he’s scared of bears. But then you can go to Mumbo Jumbo’s hut and transform into a baby walrus, and then you can go back to that walrus’ cave and get the jiggy And there’s so many more of these in the game too. You get to transform into an ant, a bee, a crocodile, and my personal favorite, the little pumpkin. I love him; all he does is just bounce around, and whenever he bounces, the top of his head comes off for a brief second. It’s amazing And the cool thing about these transformations is that sometimes you have to use them outside of the level to maybe get a jiggy in the hub area or access an area that Banjo and Kazooie can’t get to on their own It’s genius And speaking of the hub area too, it’s also incredible Gruntilda’s Lair is so vast and has so much to explore and so many secrets to find within it This is probably my third time playing through this game, and there were legitimate areas in Grunty’s Lair that I discovered in this playthrough that I have never seen before Grunty’s Lair is just incredible, and you can believe me for a fact when I say that the exploration in this game is fantastic, because even the damn hub world is fun to explore and is so satisfying to progress through And so is this entire game in general Banjo Kazooie might have some of the finest progression that I’ve ever seen in a video game And this is an incredibly important thing to get right for the kind of game that Banjo-Kazooie is, which is a Collect-a-Thon And actually, I don’t think that I even brought that Banjo-Kazooie is a Collect-a-Thon up until now And basically, if you don't know what that is, it’s a platformer (usually) where you have multiple things that you need to collect in every level in order to progress the game and unlock more things to collect Basically, though you’re always collecting shit 24/7 But again, progression is extremely important to get right in a Collect-a-Thon because you want the player to feel satisfied and rewarded constantly for exploring every level while still trying to keep every level concise enough to the point where it never feels tedious And in the case of Banjo-Kazooie, this isn’t a problem whatsoever; again, the progression is fantastic You just seamlessly fly from level to level, and the game just flows so smoothly that you start to lose track of time One of the best things about this game, too, is that there is only one instance of having to go back to a previous level to complete it, one instance in the whole entire game, and every single level other than that can be completed in one go That is just incredible, and again, it makes the game flow so smoothly and is a big reason why replaying this game is so fun every single time And I feel like they kind of missed on that front when they made Banjo-Tooie, because that game's progression is nowhere near as smooth as this game And I actually really like Banjo-Tooie as well, but when you can never complete a level in one go and have to backtrack to previous levels constantly, it starts to drag But in Banjo-Kazooie, that's never a problem; there’s never really a sense of boredom or tedium when you play this game It’s just nothing but fun from start to finish Another incredible thing about this game that has been glazed to no end, but I’m going to glaze it again anyway, is, of course, the music The music is absolutely fucking fantastic Every single theme fits every level and every area so perfectly And the music does this phenomenal thing where it’ll start to kind of warp depending on where you are in a level or in the hub world For example, in Grunty’s Lair, if you go towards the entrance to the level Gobi’s Valley, the theme of Grunty’s Lair won’t change; the main tune remains in tact, but the instruments start to change to fit that certain area, which makes it almost sound like a completely different song while still being the same song at its core It’s just fucking incredible and so impressive as well You can just tell that the developers of this game were absolutely in their bag creatively when they were making this game Also, that’s not even the only instance of the music doing that in the game; there are so many more, but another one that sticks out to me in particular is in Treasure Trove Cove when you go inside the giant crab shell, and the music for the level starts to become more monotone and more aesthetically fitting of the sub area that you’re in Again, it is just so fucking impressive, and it’s such a little detail too, but it goes such a long way, and it shows that the people who worked on this game really cared about the game that they were making The writing of the game is also fantastic It’s very British and cynical; a lot of the characters are sarcastic, especially Kazooie, who’s just an asshole most of the time Although I will say I really like Kazooie’s feud with Bottles (the side character) throughout the whole entire game They seriously just roast each other and call each other names every single time that they interact, and it’s incredible But yeah, the writing fits the game incredibly well, and it makes every character that you come across stick out from the rest One of my favorite characters in the game is Boggy from Freezeezy Peaks, who’s this Polar Bear that has three children that he goes out to get gifts for, but then he gets drunk and you have to wake him up, but then after you wake him up, instead of looking for the gifts, he waits at the top of a hill for someone to race him, so then after you race him two times, he finally says “fuck it” and goes back to look for his children’s gifts, which at that point you probably already collected them for the kids, so who knows what the fuck Boggy is going to do or where he’s going to go But yeah, he’s an absolutely fantastic character, and there are many more instances of comedic characters like him in this game Staying on the topic of the characters, though, I also like how almost every single thing in this game is a character Like, seriously, they just slap eyeballs on random objects and have them start talking to you I mean, a pair of boots is a character in this game; a treasure chest is a character; feathers are a character; almost everything that you come across in this game that isn’t an enemy is a character And this just adds to this game overall feeling very much like a cartoon that you just happen to be playing through I mean, the world that Banjo and Kazooie inhabit is so colorful and animated; every character is very expressive and distinct; even the levels in this game feel like they could just be the set piece for an episode of a cartoon Like Mad Monster Mansion, for instance, could be the setting for like a Halloween episode or something Speaking of animation too, one other minor thing that I just wanted to show some love to is the little dance animation that Banjo does after he gets a jiggy I love it, and the fact that it wasn’t in Banjo-Tooie is a travesty Also, I like Banjo’s little doggy paddle that he uses whenever he's swimming on the surface of water Shifting away from that, though, one final thing that I praise the game for is the sound effects, because they genuinely might be the best sound effects that I’ve ever heard in any game. Some of my favorites are the sound that plays when you get a jinjo, the sound effect for when you fill in a puzzle piece on a level portrait, or honestly, just any other sound effect because they’re all incredible. And so is this game; Banjo-Kazooie is just an incredible experience from start to finish With some of the best progression in any game, fantastic music, great characters, and just genius level design too, Like for example the whole level of Click Clock Wood is fucking fantastic and is just such a brilliant idea for a level to have four different versions of itself that change with each season It’s fucking genius And again, so is this game My one slight detractor to the experience is that the camera can be very stubborn sometimes and doesn’t move when it needs to in order to allow you to see where you're going But that’s really it though, and overall, it doesn’t hinder the experience massively in any way shape or form Banjo-Kazooie is just a joy from start to finish It’s an adventure from start to finish And Pumpkin Banjo is my son 5/5