It was only a matter of time before Rare brought its cutesy platforming series Banjo-Kazooie to the Xbox 360. At some point in the development process, however, a wise person realized the world might not need yet another cutesy platformer, so instead we've got Nuts & Bolts, an irreverent, self-aware, open-world, vehicle-based, Tinkertoy-workshop action game. That's a lot of adjectives, but I'd happily swap them all out for a single one like "stupendous." If you'd told me I would ever like a Banjo-Kazooie game so much, I would have called you crazy. But for numerous reasons I sincerely love this one. Before I ever got into the unique mechanics that make this such a fun game to play, Nuts & Bolts grabbed me with its bold, batty, referential, self-deprecating sense of humor. The game pokes fun at itself and the Banjo series constantly, with references to the "lame" storylines in the original Banjo games and the fact "that italian gentleman" has sold far more games in his time. The lampoon job extends to the entire video game industry, with constant jabs at Rare and its other franchises, the Xbox 360, the Frag Dolls, and a lot more. Every cutscene, exchange of dialogue, and mission description is sharper, wittier, and funnier than it has any business being in a Banjo-Kazooie game, of all things. The game can be downright hilarious. This sort of fourth-wall-busting metahumor is personified in the game's excellent new character the Lord of Games, a self-important set of hovering purple robes with a Pong-emblazoned TV for a face who claims to be the creator of every single video game ever made. At the beginning, Banjo and Kazooie are hanging out on Spiral Mountain, fat and out of work since their last outing eight years ago. Along comes the severed head of Gruntilda, the series' witchy antagonist, looking for trouble again. But before they can square off to see who can collect the most pointless items the fastest, in comes the Lord of Games to restore Banjo's fitness, give Grunty a new mechanical body, and send them off to a hub world called Showdown Town in a race to...collect a different kind of pointless item. The game gleefully wears this sort of game-design irony right on its sleeve. L.O.G. creates a handful of different-themed game worlds you can enter from Showdown Town, and in each of them you'll find the same roster of Banjo characters like Mumbo, Humba Wumba, Bottles, and Klungo waiting to dispense missions that each yield a jiggy (a jigsaw puzzle piece that's the Banjo equivalent of Mario's stars). This isn't your typical assortment of generic ice worlds and desert worlds, though. There's LOGBox 720, where you explore the innards of a gigantic "next-next gen" game console. The Jiggoseum is a sort of Olympic stadium full of athletic challenges. Banjoland is like a comical museum of past Banjo games and historical event all smashed into one small space. The Terrarium of Terror is a vaguely sci-fi-themed glass enclosure full of aliens and gigantic fungi. Plenty more opportunities for jokes go along with each of these worlds, and the game smartly makes the most of them. The first time you enter a world, you get a TV sitcom-style intro with all the Banjo characters playing different comical roles (Humba Wumba is "The Long-Suffering Wife" in the "Green Acres" knock-off) and expertly produced theme music that instantly calls to mind the sort of show that's being aped. 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. The workshop is where you can put together all kinds of wild-looking, multifunctional vehicles from generic parts you can find and purchase as you go. The vehicle-building is really easy to get a handle on, and you can intuit how a vehicle is going to perform just based on the parts you add. If you slap a jet engine and a pair of wings on your racing car, you can expect it to fly. An airplane with a couple of inflatable floaters attached to each side can double as a boat. There are gadgets and doohickeys for pushing, carrying, sucking, blowing, and a myriad of other functions. You can get egg shooters, laser guns, homing missiles, energy shields, and a lot more to extend the functionality of your car-plane-boat.You can save these blueprints and trade them on Xbox Live with your friends, too. Initially, I got frustrated with some of the game's vehicle controls, and I suspect most other people will too. But it's not that they're bad; it's simply a consequence of different parts being used together inappropriately. Too many engines on a light car with basic tires will make you fishtail and spin out constantly. But if you add more weight and replace those tires with the high-grip variety, the driving will get way more manageable. So it's more about getting a feel for how the vehicle systems work together. Don't think the vehicle-building is a throwaway feature only die-hard gearheads will get into. It's as integral to the mission-based action as it is easy to get into. There's an enormous variety of mission types available here, all designed around the things you can accomplish with a properly designed vehicle. Various missions will task you with moving cargo, getting into different kinds of combat, running checkpoint races (on land, sea, and/or air), playing soccer, demolishing an igloo, watering some giant seeds, winning a vehicular long-jump contest, knocking down dominoes, running an aerial taxi service... The point is, there's a huge number of different mission objectives. All that variety is due to how flexible and extensive the vehicle options are. I can't count the number of times I had a problem beating a particular mission, only to go back into the editor and build a better vehicle more suited to the current task that made finishing the mission much easier. That even happened with the game's final boss, which I thought was unreasonably difficult after I failed to beat it over and over. Half an hour in the workshop and I emerged with a new bruiser of a combat vehicle that I used to trounce the boss on my first try. You feel like your ingenuity is really being rewarded when you dig deep into the vehicle possibilities and find more effective (and in some cases, entirely new) ways to approach a particular task. In fact, you'll have to make use of the workshop, as the missions get harder and harder and you'll soon hit a wall you simply can't pass with the stock vehicles. If you truly don't want to build your own, you can purchase blueprints for new pre-made vehicles that become available as you get more and more jiggies. But that would be missing out on half of the fun. I personally enjoyed starting with the stock blueprints and tweaking different vehicles out to meet my current needs. The game makes it easy to replay finished missions from a simple menu. Actually, the game makes it easy to access everything. You can change vehicles or enter the workshop at any time from the pause menu. If you ever get separated from your vehicle, you can hold down a button to warp right back to it. These shortcuts are just, well, pleasant. The aim for this game would of been to not only be great fun for players and especially kids, but also for those who were lucky enough to experience the original B&K game on the N64. A little bit of nostalgia now&again i never a bad thing. Funny, inventive, gorgeous--and cheap. Microsoft decided to charge a mere $40 for Nuts & Bolts, but I got more laughs and more satisfying gameplay out of this one than most of the $60 games I've played this year. And even after spending nearly 20 hours amassing enough jiggies to take down the final boss, I'm compelled to get back in there and keep playing new missions, unlocking new vehicle parts, and exploring more of the game's beautiful world. I had no affection whatsoever for the Banjo-Kazooie franchise or characters going into Nuts & Bolts, but its list of great qualities quietly won me over to make it one of my favorite Xbox 360 games of the year.
5/5
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