Difficulty:

Just Right

Time Spent:

10 to 20 Hours

The Bottom Line:

"Worth the wait"

Banjo's N64 sequel comes to XBLA and like it's predecessor was brought back refitted in HD and widescreen along with XB achievements and leaderboards. And you'll be happy to know that the horrid framerate issues of the previous XBLA download are no where to be found here as well as the option to invert the Y axis controls which makes gameplay way easier.

Set two years after Banjo Kazooie, Gruntilda is still trapped under the boulder that fell on her as well as her minion Klungo is still trying to move the rock and free her. Suddenly Gruntilda's sisters show up in a large drilling machine and use their abilities to move the boulder and set out to help their sister restore her magic, Grunty now being mostly a skeleton. While all this is going on, Banjo, Mumbo and Bottles are playing Poker but hearing ruckus outside Mumbo goes to investigate but is noticed and chased back to Banjo's house where Grunty's sisters use their powerful zombie ray to blast Banjo's house and killing Bottles in the process and it doesn't stop there, after the king of the Jinjos offers to help Banjo out he also gets zombiefied by Gunty's sisters. So despite being a bit darker, the game still retains it's killer sense of humor.

This time around Banjo's exploits take him out of Spiral Mountain and further across the various areas of the island where he lives. This time instead of tracking down the giant picture to place Jiggys, you visit a large temple of the great Jiggywiggy and you have a bit more challenge to the puzzles.

Tons of new moves are introduced. The most valuable of these being the grip grab which allows Banjo to cling to ledges which will save many from an unfair death. But other new moves include shooting eggs while flying, shooting fire, ice, exploding and robotic eggs as well as times when Banjo and Kazooie are now able to split up and do things independently of each other. And if that wasn't enough you're shaman pal, Mumbo is also playable in short bits where he uses his magic to help Banjo's quest. Transformations are now performed by the indian magician, Humba and instead of tracking down a ton of skulls, one little glowbo creature is all you need.

Despite all the added things, I can't help think that at times it's an overkill. Notes now are used to pay Bottle's military cousin Jamjar to teach you new moves instead of just talking to him. Honeycombs have to be turned in to a large bee who will give you more health and Cheato, the spell book, has had all his pages ripped out. It seems like the collecting goes a bit overboard. As well as in the first game, you could go into a level and find everything in one go if you chose. This one flat out demands that you'll have to leave the stage at times and find another in order to find a new move that needs to be learned in order to finish or with the train and several hidden passages, will have to return to old stages to open a path. Primarily with the train. Thankfully throughout the game you now have warp areas that save the trouble of running all over creation finding things or getting lost in a labyrinth of tunnels as with the first game. It is nice having multiple paths between stages and really encourages more exploration but getting Jiggys among other things is still a lot more work.

The game is still a blast though. It offers a good challenge compared to most platformers these days and I still thought it was way more fun than Nuts and Bolts.