Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts - Xbox 360

This is without a doubt, one of the most unique games I have ever played. Previous Banjo-Kazooie games stuck with the old Super Mario 64 play style. But here, with Nuts & Bolts, Rare has take that style of game and added a twist. That twist is vehicle creation. The vehicle creator tools are quite intuitive. And after a little while, you'll find it's not hard to create a car, plane, helicopter or boat. A lot of it comes down to common sense. For instance, if you want a vehicle to fly, it's going to need wings or propellers, and they need to be balanced on the vehicle. What's the point of vehicle creation? To complete tasks that are given you to earn music notes, jiggies and T.T. trophies. There are a good variety of challenges. And while some may say they get repetitive, I do not mind this because they may be similar to other challenges, but then they put some variation into them. To complete challenges with good scores, this game really encourages outside of the box thinking. It's not always the most obvious vehicle type that will yield the best results. The graphics in this game are top notch. Rare never ceases to throw imaginitive artistic values into their games. They are the Pixar of the video game world. Through all the levels, you'll find huge areas to explore with wonderfully detailed design. I just can't say enough about what they have done visually with the game. The sound in the game is great too. The sound effects are very cartoonish, and add to the feel of the game. The music really shines through giving the feeling of fun to be had by the player. Overall this is a great game for kids and adults. While it has vehicle creation, younger ones may have a tough time with that. As a result, the ability to buy vehicle blueprints is in the game. I know this has been very helpful for my 5 year old son, since understanding the basics of making a vehicle isn't easy for him. But over time, I have also noticed him trying to build things as he gets an understanding of the physics and what is needed to make a vehicle do a specific task. I highly recommend this game to anyone who wants a good time with a game that allows you to shape what you get out of it. It encourages creativity and rewards you in spades for doing so. And at the cheap price it is selling for on Amazon, I would think this is a no brainer.

We purchased the Banjo Kazooie game but have not been able to play it. We have a 37" TV but the text in the game is impossible to see. For some reason, the manufacturer seems to think everyone has a giant screen TV to play Xbox. There is one redeeming fact. IF - and everyone may not have this option - you have Xbox Live, you can get a free downloaded update to fix this problem. But what if you don't have Xbox live - I guess you are stuck with an unplayable game. Luckily, we have Xbox Live so we will be downloading the fix and trying to play the game. I was not happy with the whole vehicle theme to begin with and this text problem makes it impossible to recommend.

The game is somewhat fun, but.... it's not what you might expect from a BK game. The game is basically one challenge after another to win Jiggys and trophies. Unfortunately, but you might like this, most of the challenges are timed races. I was looking forward to kicking back, exploring worlds and finding Jiggys, Notes and Jingos, not having to beat certain times to win Jiggys. The leisure is gone... Even this might not be so bad, except building and choosing the correct vehicles is confusing and the interface is very confusing with different ways to select and build vehicles. The collection of Acts is disjointed and the constant back and forth is frustrating. Expect to see the puzzle loading screen A LOT as you move back and forth between interfaces. And one last thing, which others have mentioned, is the text. This game has TONS of reading and the script is very small and sometimes, scrolls automatically and quickly before you can read what was displayed. I have a huge tv and it's very very difficult to read and quite maddening. This piece of the game is very poor. I hate not giving this game 5 stars because I love the BK series and want to see more, but they missed the mark on this one. They should have stuck to the previous platform and just enhanced it with the vehicle aspect to make exploring the worlds more fun than just endless challenges and clunky confusing interfaces.

This is the most amazing game I've ever played. Anyone who played with legos as a kid will likely find it just as addictive. Basically, it's a 3rd person, follow-behind game where you build your own machines to play through different challenges. The options are endless. You have hundreds of parts in the garage to use; engines, wheels, fuel, body parts, seats, gadgets of all kinds. You can build from scratch or start with a prebuilt chassis. And of course you can save your good vehicles to use over again. The game has notes for currency and you can use these to buy more parts or buy blueprints for predesigned vehicles/chassis. I found myself hunting for more engines. I downloaded the free demo before buying and actually took sick leave from work to play the demo and skipped lunch to boot. Half the time I just play around in the test garage building different vehicles. There's infinite things you can do and I felt like I was 9 years old again building rocket ships out of mismatched lego parts. A few of the challenges take some practice driving, particularly the ones where you can't use your own vehicles. More levels are unlocked as you complete the challenges, but there's no particular order you have to play them in. If you get stuck on one challenge, you always have others to do to avoid getting frustrated. The text-driven storyline is really the only downer. They could have sprung for some voiceover. If you're patient enough to squint and read the dialogue, there is some wonderful dry wit to appreciate, but reading dialogue feels like a throwback to old NES games. Speaking of which, the gameplay is designed with the greatest parts of classic video games in mind and it's a lot of fun all the way around.

Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts is a great game for families and gamers alike. In a word, its just plain fun. There's nothing too deep here in the way of story or character elements. Its more about having fun in many different types of challenges and game worlds, with an emphasis on building your own vehicles in order to conquer your current challenge or objective. Add to that some excellent bright and colorful graphics, and you have a great game overall. Pros: Game is just FUN -- Creating your own vehicles is a blast and gives the user unlimited possibilities -- Still a decent amount of old fashioned platforming -- Great graphics -- Retains alot of the loveable traits of the old banjo games Cons: Creating vehicles, while the interface is easy, could be pretty daunting for young kids -- If you get frustrated easily with losing and retrying challenges, you might want to steer clear -- The game overall is a tad difficult, which again could turn younger gamers off Overall I'd definitely recommend this game to people of all ages, but I'd advise to be careful with younger children as they might find the gameplay and vehicle creator difficult. Luckily, if you are devoid of imagination or just lazy, the game throws a multitude of custom built vehicles at your that will serve just fine in all of the challenges. Add to this that the game is cheaper than most, and its a must buy!

The game is shown with the Xbox case and art work. To my surprize it came in a plain square cd case. when my son saw this he was very upset. He purchased this with his own birthday money and thought as did I it was going to be in a case like the picture. He keeps all of his games lined up in alpha order and this is not going to fit in the rack with the rest of his games. It's ok I guess to sell it in a plain cd case but then they should show it in that kind of case. That is false advertizement. Sorry just think that's not the right thing to do.

I understand that this game is a disappointment for many considering the legacy it was burdened with, but I still think it's an objectively good game. I played this when it first came out and I had never played the N64 games so I just enjoyed it in a vacuum and had fun building cars. The lego style car building experience is easy to understand and the progression through the game is well-designed and keeps you interested in the things you are building. It also has great replayability (I still dig it up every few years) and I don't know of anything else like it (the closest is Kerbal Space Program but that doesn't have the gameplay aspect, just the building). I also really enjoy the art and style, which isn't usually something I care about in games. So overall, I know it wasn't what a lot of people were hoping for but I think this is a great game

Fun for a short while, but gets very repetitive and boring half-way...I don't think I even got around to finishing it. Lets face it, this is not the Banjo-Kazooie that we all know and love from the first game. Their placement into the game was to move product.

This game is fun because I enjoy creating things like vehicles in this game and if you bought it today you would enjoy this game

My son loves that you can create your own vehicles in the game. he's 14, and still loves this game.