Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts (Xbox 360)

So far I’ve skirted around telling you what the challenges consist of, and that is with good reason. These challenges are what makes the game stand out from its peers. The challenges in the game are all vehicle based, and take place on land, water and in the air. What makes the game different is that gamers get to design their own vehicles.

The challenges are not merely races, they are extremely varied and the player is free to choose how they approach the problem. Some challenges are as simples as driving over a number of switches, others are checkpoint races, one challenge has you playing a football match against the equivalent of giant Subuteo players. The initial choices seem obvious, Should it be a heavy vehicle or a light one? What size engine should I use? It soon becomes apparent that the choices are far wider than this. One challenge I did was to soak a sponge. Initially I did this by creating a fast vehicle with water squirters on. I would quickly soak the sponge until the squirter was empty, then speed past enemies to a pool to refill then return and repeat. I found this effective but not very quick. I then created a different vehicle which was slower but had a tray to carry items and a couple of egg guns. I immediately took the sponge and dropped it onto the tray then drove to the pool blasting enemies as I drove. This was a quicker and more effective method. This shows one of the more simple challenges in the game and with many challenges you will find yourself fine tuning your vehicle or even starting from scratch to meet the demands of the challenge.

Fortunately help is at hand. You are given some basic blueprints and you can also buy blueprints from one of the games shops. This does defeat the point of the game slightly as the real thrill is the design and experimentation process. Thankfully you can tinker with the blueprints, and occasionally I did create a standard vehicle from a blueprint and then change a few of the parts on it to get the desired result.

I mentioned in the example of the sponge challenge that I wanted to complete the challenge more quickly, this wasn’t just to improve my best time but to unlock more Jiggies. Each challenge has three rewards, game currency, a Jiggy and a T.T Trophy. A challenge will have a set criteria (generally a time limit) for each of these, for example, complete a challenge in 2 minutes and you get currency, 1 minute 30 seconds and you will also get a Jiggy, 1 minute and you also get the trophy. Trophies are important because collecting trophies will unlock more Jiggies. Unable to get a trophy? Well come back later once you have unlocked more vehicle parts and create a superior vehicle making the challenge easier.

Some of the games challenges will force you to use a specific vehicle. These are generally challenges where you are introduced into a new game mechanic such as flying. The rest of these challenges are generally the more frustrating ones in the game. I found myself constantly retrying these challenges due to the slightest of mistakes. These challenges actually test the skill of the player rather than their inventiveness, whilst there is nothing wrong with this it will alter the pace of play, rather than adapting a vehicle to a situation you have to learn the track.