Banjo and Kazooie is back after a console generation, now on you X Box. 360.
Nuts and bolts took a lot of the things that Nintendo has been critized for and caries it over to the X Box. The graphics, while colorful, are worth nothing on a regular TV. 1080 is the way this game should be played. In these economicaly stressful times, the idea of going out and buying a new TV to play just one game, may turn off a lot of players. With out the HD you get drab graphics, jaggies, hickups, and blurring. While the Wii has attempted to prove that graphics don't always matter, the way something looks has always made humans pass their first judgement on the game. Which brings me to my next issue with the presentation. There are no voice overs that you can understand. They are the usual grunts, sighs, and chirping that came from the first games. This is annoying at best, but what makes it worse is that since the words are all typed, it is very small print, thus difficult to read for most of us "old timers". This not only effected the plot, but the way you put things together. If that doesn't turn you off, this might.
The idea behind Nuts and bolts is to create vehicles that get you from point A to point B. Well that is all well and good because you can create some pretty interesting vehicles, but aside from having difficulty reading the print, you are also timed while creating these vehicles. Which makes a lot of these things a trial and error basis. That was great back in the NES days, but this is 2k8, we've moved on. This frustrated this gamer even further.
The controls are ok to handle, they are pretty easy to pick up and play since the game is geared toward the more casual or younger player. The game still cow tows to the "run and fetch" style of the first one to some degree. Of course the plot is pretty much the same as the prior games, so don't expect much difference there.
All in all Banjo-Kazooie Nuts and Bolts can be summed up in one word: frustrating. Over the years of my gaming I have come to expect a certain degree of frustration in some games, a certain level of efficency in the presentation of the sights, sounds, and controls. Banjo-Kazooie doesn't bring that to the table. It uses dated ideas for minigames of putting this together to staple a thing plot together, while making it as difficult as possible for the gamer to enjoy the game through inefficent visuals, poor sound quality, and timed play controls.
The apple has fallen from from the tree.