TheHumbleGamer 7

To start, I'd like to say I was a backer of this game on Kickstarter. I won't disclose how much I backed it for here, but I'll say it was To start, I'd like to say I was a backer of this game on Kickstarter. I won't disclose how much I backed it for here, but I'll say it was quite a lot. I'd also like to say I honestly don't regret backing this game, even though it turned out not to be as good as I (and many others) expected it to be.



I can't say I'm not disappointed with this game, but I want to be one of the reasonable people who tells you it isn't as bad as many have said. It certainly isn't flawless, but it still has a charm to it. There are parts of the game where you can clearly see the effort that went into it. As far as I'm concerned, this game was pretty much what was promised by Playtonic, although most of us agree that may not have been the best thing now that we've played it.



I'd like to take you through my personal quarrels with the game before telling you the things I liked.

For starters, the story was not as charming as classic rare titles, the characters didn't really have that same importance or personality that characters had in classic titles. The game does nothing new with the 3D platformer/collectathon genre and just simply copied Banjo-Kazooie (for the most part) in its style. I think this is what ticks me off the most about this game, it's entire style is a rip-off of Banjo, and that isn't what most of us wanted. We wanted a Banjo style game yes, but we wanted something new with that formula, not the exact same stuff. The game has a neat variety of levels to explore, all expandable by using pagies you collect (this games jiggies), but here's the issue, the worlds follow the Banjo-Tooie Style and not the Banjo-Kazooie Style, they are vast expanses that can take a while to fully explore. My major issue with this mixed with world expansion starts with the fact that you don't know when you've collected and done all you can in a non-expanded version of a world, it never tells you what you can and cannot do in a non-expanded world, which makes it really difficult to know if the things your missing are in the expanded version of a world or if you can get them before expanding it and with worlds being as large as they are (and with no warp points like Banjo-Tooie), getting around them to explore and find the last few missing items in non-expanded (or even expanded) worlds is an annoying, unnecessary headache that Playtonic honestly should have realised was bad design. My last real quarrel with the game is Rextro's minigames. Whoever designed a couple of these needs to be thrown into the nearest volcano. Up N Over and Hurdle Hijinx (especially the latter). These two mingames were by far the things that angered me the most out of anything in this game. Hurdle Hijinx is especially poorly designed as a mini-game, it took me over 4 and a half hours to do because I have terrible hand/eye co-ordination. It is hugely flawed and I'm pretty sure thousands of players would agree with me.



Now with all my personal problems with the game out of the way, I want to tell you what this game does right, starting with how I genuinely felt while playing it. As a huge Banjo-Kazooie & Banjo-Tooie fan I was really hopeful about this game and even through it's flaws I focused on what I found the most fun. For starters, I think the music in this game is fantastic. I know some don't like the tracks, but i think they all fit and are all memorable in there own right. I liked the large worlds (despite what I said above). Whenever I was exploring hunting for pagies and quills (and other secrets!) I felt just like a kid exploring the vast worlds of Banjo-Tooie, or even Spyro. it was actually fun and honestly made me feel like that kid again. The boss of each world was unique (albeit a bit silly in some cases) and were all pretty fun to fight and really reminded me of the banjo-Tooie boss fights. I Loved the hub world (Hivory Towers) and slowly getting through it was fun. Many of the pagies were extremely rewarding to collect and that feeling of success I had solving many of the harder puzzles is unrivalled in all of my gaming history.



This game had some serious potential, and it does a heck of alot for copying the banjo formula. My hope would be that Playtonic learns from the flaws of this game and (if it makes another) decides to make something truly worthy of the title 'Rare-vival' … Expand