Banjo-Tooie | Bigger, Better, and Worse - AntDude

[Music] Banjo Kazooie is one of the best platformers of all time it's an amazing culmination of great art style level design music game mechanics world building script writing in his damn near perfection it's like just an accepted idea at this point that banjo kazooie was not only impactful at its time but a clear example of a game that has survived the test of time everyone holds this game in super high regards as a game that not only helped to find a genre but an entire console generation it's awesome and then banjo tooie happened and no one really talks about it all that much you'd think with a game as celebrated as banjo kazooie the direct sequel would pop up in conversation a whole lot more but ya know that's not the case it's not that people don't know about this game but while people are able to go into these long elaborate essays to explain how all the pieces fit together so beautifully in kazooie discussions about - we tend to focus on how the game is big and that's about it well to continue on my quest on exploring the entirety of dangers legacy as well as justify the purchase of an xbox one let's take a look at the sequel to banjo-kazooie banjo-tooie the Xbox version this time around is a lot more required I think a lot of people remember that tui is all about being bigger in scope and this was all done at the cost of performance holy crap the framerate is so rough at times on the 64 it's a game that actually had widescreen support back in the day which is pretty damn neat actually but for a good chunk of the game it feels like a slog just based on the smoother framerate alone the Xbox version is far and away the better way to play this game the transition did screw up one of the opening cutscenes though which is pretty funny the music was composed with the original versions lag in mind so while the n64 version plays like this the Xbox version is like this wow guy is such a lazy port you should be ashamed of yourselves and with the higher resolution I can finally understand what I'm looking at here this pixel sandwich on the n64 confused me for years also I'm pretty sure that's a Game Boy camera no amount of Nintendo to Microsoft rebranding is gonna change that one that is a Game Boy camera and all of its quote unquote glory now one of the best parts about banjo-tooie is that it feels like a genuine continuation of the previous game so many sequels for platformers usually take place in brand-new worlds with new stories in new villains and oftentimes totally new mechanics but not this one kazooie ended with grunty falling off her castle and a giant boulder landed on top of her need I remind you killing her and Tooey begins with her assistant klungo who had a super minor role last time struggling to get the rock off her for the last two years since that first game but we cut to a massive digging machine of the hag one crashing through spiral mountain manned by grunty sisters min jela and blob Elda and thanks to an always reliable witch spell they dispose of the rock and with that grunty is saved she's still dead but not dead dead you know how these things ago all the while banjo kazooie bottles and mumbo are enjoying a good old game of poker and this is where some more of that awesome style that the first game had shines through I really love how fluid these animations are these are genuine cartoon characters oh but no 2d in sight though yeah banjo sister is just m.i.a for this one I wouldn't really blame her last time she really hung out with these guys a witch kidnapped her so I would leave too as the drill is making its way through the mountain it shakes things up pretty violently and Mambo goes to check things out unfortunately though now without being spotted by the returning grunty so as you would expect she makes chase she pulls out a magical spell of her own and shoots it towards banjos house luckily though all the characters that matter make their escape and howl sure that's just a flesh wound now like that would actually kill off one of the main characters in the game before the adventure even begins ah sick dude actual murder it's rated E for Everyone Oh men the entirety of spiral mountains been destroyed it's all in tatters not even grunty's own lair was safe from all of the attacks as dark and grim as this is it's actually pretty cool to start off in these same hub world as the first game after some time has passed there are some extra areas to explore and once you travel down the hole that the hag one came down in and encounter klungo for the first time we run into the much more pleasant iolo hags and the jinjo village on top of also having access to every single ability that we learned in the first game this all adds to that feeling of this being a proper continuation rather than just another adventure that's really really cool I also love the king of the Jin King jingling this guy's a trip what the first games ending had you think that the Jin are some sort of mythical beasts that are able to summon an almighty being of mass destruction nah man that was all a fluke they all just want to chill out and this guy is their leader but don't get too attached though one press of the suck button on the big ol blaster zombify is our beloved king this side this game's a whole lot darker than the last one luckily though before his zombification King jingling instructed us and where to go next and after one run through bottles house and refusing to tell his family the tragic news of his passing nice guy banjo over here we run across the shrine of master jiggy Wiggy that's an amazing name this is the new location to unlock levels all by actually completing puzzles this time which is pretty cool it controls much better than that side game from kazooie as well with that very first puzzle done all of that story out of the way the adventure can finally properly begin I know that usually platformers don't really do much with the story but credit or credits new banjo tooie added a ton of lore to this world it introduced a new premise with grunty going out for revenge it brought in a brand new world that's connected to the old one without feeling forced there are plenty of incentives to see the adventure through all the way to the end good job rare you did an awesome job with this one but with all that being said it's time to finally dive into the meat of the game the actual gameplay cool boy so at its core 2e is just more of kazooie but with a much larger scope the worlds are absolutely massive this time around with the half a dozen or so different sub areas within each of them and rather than being their own self-contained locations and now the entire universe of this game is interconnected whether it be from traveling on this huge train that you get access to a few levels in or by fighting hidden pathways scattered about you can get to any single area in this game a handful of different ways and that would just be one thing if it was an additional means of fast travel but often some of the tasks that characters ask of you consists of performing actions in different levels the prospector here in Glitter Gulch mine wants his Mouse partner back who is held captive in my ahem temple Dobby the poor guy can't can't catch a break got himself imprisoned in witchy world on his way to the lava world and upon freeing him and by using that after mentioned train he actually gets to finally go to that lava world he was talking about in the last game on the fire side of hail fire Peaks my absolute favorite though we have Mildred Ice Cube in the ice side of hellfire peaks she lost her husband by way of a blizzard sweeping him up away into the sky in cloud cuckoo-land and after just one little push you get to reconnect him back with this true love Oh a JK you we kill him but it's okay now the waters not hot so these little pigs in Jolly Rogers Lagoon can go for a swim sacrifices had to be made and on top of the returning moveset from Kazooie tui is all about once again constantly adding to it with so so many different moves and abilities it is crazy now you can aim your eggs in first-person either while on the ground or while flying there's different elemental eggs that you can use now with fire ice and explosive as well as one that shoots out a tiny robotic bird that you can then control and explode on command you can use kazooie as a drill for maneuverability you can grab on ledges now and shimmy across them Andrew been able to split the duo up when you touch the appropriate pads Oh sick dude that was totally worth an achievement with this new ability now both Banjo and Kazooie have their own unique set of solo moves as you move forward throughout the adventure it almost feels like three entirely different characters here since each one is able to do things that the other configurations can't and the feeling of constant growth is nice but a lot of these are implemented to fix problems that shouldn't have been introduced in the first place it's also pretty annoying at times being blocked out of a move just because you're not playing as the right configuration requiring you to add quite a bit of backtracking into the mix it is relatively easy getting back to that point with the appropriate character but even then it's still not ideal just not terrible oh yeah and also banjo can use kazooie as a gun you know I think that's more animal abuse but with this series that has it so often I'm kind of losing track this is so weird man I guess I guess because rare had success with Goldeneye and Perfect Dark then why not do the same thing with banjo the oddest part about the entire thing these segments are actually pretty fun never would I have thought that these two things coming together would have made a good fit but calling me surprised they're not bad this one mission really sucks the time limit is super strict on it but aside from that now I know the big question on your mind is who is giving you these moves if bottles bit the big one the introducing bottles brother drill sergeants jamjars who is not only your new teacher but he also takes on this game's rhyming duties as well what you need is an aiming side hit the target then you might first-person view by pressing Y hit left trigger or right trigger to fire worth a cura see alright I think I think the Xbox port is a bit rougher than I thought they made a lot more sense with the n64 buttons oh but it's ok jam jars is a bit of a goof world's also have proper boss fights now - yeah kazoo we had some stronger enemy encounters here there but nothing that really felt like a proper battle aside from the final fight with gruntilda here every single stage has a big baddie to tangle with and with how wide the move set is and the bosses sometimes taking full advantage of that these are a much appreciated the dish I mean old King Cole is pretty dumb he just wanders aimlessly while you Pelt him with eggs I that's it's the worst it's Thor's fight in the game but for the most part these are a real highlight for the adventure mr. patch with a strange wobbly inflatable thing by far my favorite one it's mainly for his awesome theme song which is still so damn good but this is the one fight that stuck out to me the most out of all of them well aside from Lord whoa FAQ FAQ justjust for the name now I wonder if I'm gonna be demonetised for saying that mumbo-jumbo has a starring playable role this time too by collecting these magical creatures called globo's you're able to toss them into mumbles little bag where he can then harness that magic when standing on his specific pads he can bring a giant stone golem to life for you to control and wreak havoc add oxygen to water so you can swim without worrying about catching your breath lift a rock it's exciting stuff all around those globo's can also be given to this Native American stereotype humble Wamba who now takes control over transforming banjo into a new creature there's a little stone banjo they let you talk to other stone creatures and take place in a kickball tournament always thought that was cute and adorable roaring t-rex that with the power of mumbo you're able to play as in two different sizes the washing machine joke from the first game became a real thing now where you can shoot underwear that's hilarious there's a TNT detonator where you can you can detonate TNT there's a there's a snowball alright some of these aren't that great they all perform as expected at least there are plenty of things that you simply can't get to as banjo or kazooie and that's where these transformations come in and none of them are outright bad but some of them are just not all that exciting although the B from click Lockwood returns it's a little weird though like you guys you guys didn't want to even try making an animation for this so yeah man they really added a lots of this game just conceptually banjo tooie is far and away better than kazooie you got brand new moves interconnected worlds you got unique play styles pretty fun boss fights there's a lot of cool stuff here but it's when it all comes together that it starts to fall flat there is one major issue that prevents this game from being greater than it should be canary Mary oh my god I hate her so much so like not only is she an absolutely terrifying looking specimen all she wants to do is race you but that consists of doing nothing but mashing buttons like a psychopath for minutes at a time oh wait wait wait but not too fast no no no you got a mass room at a moderate speed that's the only path to success the racing Glitter Gulch mine is whatever it's just more annoying than anything else but in cloud cuckoo-land oh oh man this sucks early-stage arthritis here I come okay in actuality the backtracking that's that if that's the main problem sure the worlds are huge this time but that isn't inherently a problem often you're restricted from progression towards a jiggy because you just didn't have the needed ability and that coupled with areas not really having much in the way of interesting landmarks when the time eventually comes to return half the struggle is then finding just where exactly you need it to go I've heard people have issue with how much darker the tone of the game is from a more muted color palette used for the levels and a less bouncy more atmospheric soundtrack to accompany it but that's all fine to me that's not an excuse for making these locations so barren and a hassle to explore especially when sometimes the clue to completing a levels task rests in another level so unless mentally you're keeping on top of things at all times it is very easy to get confused witchy world is the main exception to this in my opinion every area of this level feels different so I never once struggled to complete it the same goes for cloud cuckoo-land yeah it's big but the outside has so many interesting landmarks on them big cheese a trash can there are bees all the way at the top of the mountain I can easily remember what's going on here because I can't make sense of any of this it's awesome the majority of Jolly Rogers Lagoon is a massive confusing underwater maze pterodactyl land is just open and empty for the sake of it just to make room for the big t-rex which only gets used a couple of times and grunty industries home and grunty industries this stage is multiple floors of dank grey uninteresting looking warehouse with the doorways leading up and down and all around I spent just over three hours getting everything in here it felt like genuine insanity at times the scope of things here does make the game feel like a much grander adventure for sure but it's at the sacrifice of satisfying moment-to-moment gameplay a lot of times you're just spent walking to a destination that you're not even sure if that's the right place to go and sometimes the game just tells you to wait Oh fun luckily though in the Xbox version there is a brand new hint system that does help point you in the right direction it doesn't fully alleviate the frustration though you just get vague sentences that tell you what the objectives are if this game got the full remake treatment and had an in-game map that you can have show up at all times then it would probably be totally fixed the number of collectable notes has been reduced as well I was always of the mindset that they helped push the player to see every aspect of a level back in kazooie so here it's a bit tougher to do so when there are less of them in bigger areas yeah the overall count is still at 100 but it's chopped up into 16 nests of five and one nest of 20 I guess it was to counter Donkey Kong 64 having 500 bananas per level but in my opinion this is far - on the opposite side of the spectrum oh yeah and also that lovely little jiggy animation from the first game that was pretty iconic completely gone now which personally I'm still pretty upset about it and actually come to think of it the talking items that explained what they did in kazooie that's gone - now everything is explained by jam jars I mean that's fine it's not really a problem but it does feel like they removed some of the charm on purpose without much substance to replace it with ultimately all of these things combine to lead to a less satisfying experience which sucks because again I think chewy does so many things right and it did have the potential to be way better than kazooie like when you know you're working towards something in this game and you can see the reward within arm's reach it is pretty fun and just based on the expanded moveset simply controlling banjo is much more enjoyable than last time I just think rail was too ambitious with this project seeing just how much stuff they could fit into a single cartridge which to be fair is thing rare was pretty known for back in the day but I'll give the game this much any sense of confusion or overload coming from the things that you can and can do and all the objects to collect it's not as ridiculous as Donkey Kong 64 where that game had like a million things to collect and every button and every button combination had a different thing that you can do it was very confusing now that game was a nightmare and with all the stuff that - he has going for it there was even some content that didn't make it into the final product this has been like one of my favorite things and the entirety of gaming for a long time now bottles revenge a mode where a second player is able to play as the newly evil spirit of the recently deceased mole where they can control enemies and try to fight the other player as banjo and they cut it before the game released this is all thankfully still within the game's code so it's nothing that some emulation can't solve and on top of the massive single-player campaign there's also a pretty substantial multiplayer mode where many of these score based challenges that are found within the main game can be played with multiple players which is actually pretty fun it may seem pretty forced - given the genre of 3d platformer having just a ton of minigames like this but considering how multiplayer focused to the n64 was this makes perfect sense and of course then we have stop and swap time to finally talk about this can of worms so this was a feature that was meant to transfer data between banjo kazooie and banjo tooie by way of swapping out cartridges mid playthrough since early models of the n64 had 10 seconds of RAM that would maintain data despite the cartridge no longer being in the console however newer models of the 64 reduced to that time - only one second so for fear of um assuming kids breaking games and consoles on a regular basis this had to be scrapped the way it was meant to work was that there is a handful of colored eggs as well as an ice key hidden within banjo kazooie that was teased in the games ending they are still accessible by entering in stupidly massive cheat codes in the n64 version but they're also unlockable by having saved data from banjo tooie on the Xbox version so you go to the different hiding spots where these items are located it plays a massive fanfare makes it feel like it's a really big deal when you get them and then with the eggs in tow you're able to go back to banjo tooie and find this brand-new character Peggy and she will hatch them for you I gotta say after 10 plus years of anticipation I am super excited to see what I get okay you get one new close-combat move okay you don't really do a close-combat much anyway jinjo is a multiplayer character homing eggs and Xbox theme a get gamer pick alright cool man this this whole thing really paid off at least with the ice key if you find the massive safe you gain access to a mega globe Oh would you bring to Humble wamba's Hut in the il o hags to transform kazooie into a dragon dude it's like it's like super pointless there's no time in the game whatsoever we're blowing fire is useful in the slightest but I don't care this is this is still pretty awesome it's certainly a better move than being able to abuse kazoo we have the push of a button some of those unlockables were still accessible in banjo-tooie on the 64 by finding and defeating the three of them spread throughout spiral mountain and the jinjo village they originally would give you some of the colored stop and swap eggs but now on xbox you just get shiny eggs that's it nothing nothing special jamjars says hey good job and that's about it okay it's a it's a really big letdown up to so many years of mystery but the whole idea of stop and swap is still such a super fascinating concept for me for years there was always this massive mystery surrounding these items that you could never get access to but you could just seed them they're within arm's reach beacon dude nothing about it it always led to really fun discussions talking about what could have been and besides a game rewarding you for playing previous games in the same series is something that I don't think has done enough in gaming nowadays that's still something really cool now these items do unlock things in nuts-and-bolts as well but next time so if it wasn't obvious enough at this point I am definitely in the camp of people who think that kazooie is way better than to e on individual things too he does do things better but on the whole kazooie's like I said that game is damn near perfect it's it would have been really hard to top that game anyway but one of the things that Chewie does do better than kazooie is the ending and this was a clever segue to talk about the ending once you finally get your hands on the appropriate amount of jiggies and complete every puzzle that jiggy Wiggy shrine has to offer you it is time to head to the tippy-top of ILO heggs cauldron keep and I love this place gruntal de being out for revenge and retiring her rhyming ways makes her a bit more of a serious villain the darker themes make for a more serious adventure and finally reaching the top of a huge mountain after a long adventure makes for a more epic conclusion being reminded of the bad guys existence a little bit more often would have been nice you just fight klungo a couple times and that's it but overall I'm a fan there is another fun and wacky quiz segment but instead of doing the over-the-top board game it's a trivia fight to the death and grunty is not afraid to put her own sisters who saved her at risk yeah it's not as charming as the furnace of fun I guess but I wasn't ever a huge fan of that anyway so I like this mostly because we don't have to deal with any of that Brent til to garbage that alone makes this way better after getting through the Game Show safely grunty once again makes an escape while we let some credits roll by banjo is able to reverse the effects of the suck blow machine and bring bottles back to life as well as unzoom fighting gym ling and with the help of ding pot grunty's old assistant making a grand return it's time for the final encounter against the evil witch in her giant drill tank it's a good old-fashioned shoot off - this is a pretty fun final boss this plenty of obstacles to avoid and questions to answer because why not it's a much more engaging fight than the final boss of the first game in my opinion but before long she's toast anyway we saw that coming we killed her again banjo and Friends celebrate their victory with a party at bottles place the good guys kick around grunty's head for a little bit which was actually censored in Japan because I guess this was just too violent for you guys she warns us of her impending return in banjo 3 which still hasn't happened yet and every time I say that out loud it makes me sad and that ends banjo tooie and then Microsoft bought rareware and it's been a disaster since but yeah that's banjo tooie not a bad game but it does feel like Rare developed it without really keeping in mind to the stuff that made banjo kazooie so special in the first place this game does have its fans and if you're one of the people out there who do prefer this sequel to the original more power to you but I think as time goes on the moment-to-moment gameplay of banjo kazooie that tends to be the preferable option maybe a full-on remake that the likes of crash spyro and even spongebob got would make this adventure a lot more worthwhile in a modern day setting but who knows time will tell on that one but yeah I guess I guess that's all downhill from here right because next time we're taking a look at banjo kazooie nuts and bolts apparently the game that killed the franchise so I am very excited to finally play that one there are the two Game Boy Advance games as well grunty's Revenge and banjo pilot so we'll knock all of those out in one final stop on this adventure but until then with the extra little bit of time I have with you all I want to take another look at where replay I want to take another look at a game from rares past last time we took a look at attic attack and that was yeah we just went way too far back in rares timeline how about we take a look at saberwolf you know the main character from that game does show up in banjo-tooie so that character must have a great legacy if they wanted to put him into a banjo game let's check it out nope [Music]

Channel: AntDude

Views: 1,196,287

Keywords: AntDude, Dude Reviews, Review, Video Review, Nintendo 64, XBOX One, XBOX 360, Rareware, Rare Replay, Banjo Kazooie, Banjo Tooie, Banjo Kazooie Nuts and Bolts, Yooka Laylee, Banjo Kazooie Smash Bros Reaction, Banjo Kazooie theme, Banjo Kazooie Smash Bros music, Nintendo 64 platformers, best Nintendo 64 platformers, Banjo Kazooie review, Banjo Tooie review, Banjo Kazooie Nuts and Bolts Review, Banjo in Smash, Nintendo Direct reaction, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate Reaction

Id: tQuT_vKrdKM

Length: 25min 52sec (1552 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 03 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/pastaishere]

I don't get why people hate the game for having backtracking. The game conveniently gives you entrances back to the other levels when you need them.

The point of getting lost in these world is kind of ridiculous. This is an adventure game, you are supposed to explore and soak yourself in the worlds. The only two valid criticizing I found were the notes in clusters being a bad idea and that some worlds lack some landmarks (Terrydactyland and Glitter Gulch Mine).

[u/[deleted]]

I agree with the video, I could never finish Tooie for the reasons he stated but I 100% Kazooie a few times.