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A decent but short outing for Banjo & Kazooie on the Game Boy Advance.
Introduction:
Originally announced during E3 2001, Banjo Kazooie: Grunty's Revenge has certainly been a long time coming. Not only was the game in development for a great deal of time, but when Microsoft purchased Rare during the latter part of last year, Banjo's GBA debut, along with the other scheduled Rare GBA releases, were pushed back even further. Indeed, it was beginning to look like Rare's GBA titles were never going to get a release, that is of course until THQ announced it would be publishing the games. Since then, we've seen huge amounts of screenshots and in-game video footage that were suggesting that Grunty's Revenge was going to turn out very well indeed. Was it worth the two-year wait? Well, not exactly, but it's certainly a very enjoyable and well-built platformer despite a few flaws.
Story:
As those who have been following the development of this game over the past few years will most likely know, Banjo Kazooie: Grunty's Revenge takes place after the original Banjo Kazooie N64 game. The game's storyline follows on from the first title, before the events of Banjo Tooie. As the title suggests, Grunty's back and seeking revenge for her previous defeat. Klungo, Grunty's reliable but more than a little dense sidekick has resurrected the evil witch's spirit into a new robotic form. With the promise of even more power, Grunty draws up a plan to kidnap Kazooie and then travel back in time to prevent her original defeat by making sure Banjo and Kazooie never met even each other. Sure, the story is more than a little farfetched, and slightly confusing to those who haven't previously played the N64 titles, but the game is presented in true Rare fashion, with plenty of amusing dialogue.
Gameplay:
Whilst the previous N64 Banjo Kazooie games were 3D platformers, due to the obvious technical restrictions of the system, Rare's GBA team opted for a top-down perspective. Despite the view change, Grunty's Revenge actually plays remarkably similarly to the N64 games, with large amounts of platforming, enemy bashing and of course, collecting. Thanks to Grunty's evil plans, the game begins with the player just controlling Banjo. A very limited selection of moves is available at first, with Banjo just being able to walk around, jump and duck. After meeting up with a grumpy old mole named Bozzeye, he'll explain to Banjo that new moves can be acquired by collecting musical notes. Once certain amounts of notes have been found, the player can visit Bozzeye and he'll teach Banjo a new move. A total of fifteen additional moves are made available as the player progresses through the game, and each one gained allows Banjo to access new areas or defeat certain enemies.
The action is split up into a main overworld with five individual stages branching off from it. Each stage is packed full of collectables, including the musical notes previously mentioned. None of the stages are available when the game is begun. Instead, the player must collect golden jigsaw pieces known as Jiggies. Once certain amounts of Jiggies have been collected, the Jiggie Temple can be visited to open the door to one of the five stages. Each stage, including the overworld, has ten Jiggies hidden in it, making a total of 60 to be discovered during the adventure. Many of them are hidden in hard to reach places that can be accessed by using one of the many extra moves. In addition, there are also some that can only be obtained by completing a sub-quest. For example, during the second stage, Breegul Beach, there are five blue seashells scattered around the beach. Finding all five and returning them to a certain character will earn a Jiggie. There are also numerous minigames that must be completed to gain Jiggies, including a fishing minigame where a certain number of creatures must be caught before the time runs out. Finally, in each stage five colourful Jinjo creatures are hidden. Once all five Jinjo's have been collected from a stage another Jiggie can be acquired. Whilst collecting is clearly the focus of the title, it rarely becomes tedious and tiresome because of variety in challenge for finding the Jiggie pieces. Quite often the gamer will be faced with some pretty challenging platforming, or even very tight time limits to reach certain items, which makes Grunty's Revenge all the more challenging and enjoyable.
In addition to the platforming and collecting, there are a few other features that come into play. Once Banjo's rescued his feathery friend, Kazooie, new moves from Bozzeye can be learnt that allow a selection of eggs to be fired at enemies and objects including fire, ice and electro eggs. These eggs can not only be used for defeating certain enemies, but there are also some switch-based puzzles require the player to shoot a certain type of egg to activate platforms or release jiggies. Another interesting feature is the inclusion of four transformations. After completing one of four boss fights a boss totem is acquired. Pick up this item and return it to one of Mumbo Jumbo's huts and he'll perform some experimental magic to transform Banjo & Kazooie into a different animal or object. These transformations include a mouse that allows access to areas through tiny gaps, a tank that can blast down certain panels and a candlestick that can set fire to various objects and enemies. These transformations, whilst they aren't used frequently, do add yet more variety to the quests for collecting Jiggies.
Of course, no game is perfect, and Banjo Kazooie: Grunty's Revenge certainly has some flaws. One of the most apparent flaws is the perspective; the game looks and tries to be as much like the 3D Banjo Kazooie titles as possible. The problem is that the stages have many platforms at differing heights, and it is frequently very difficult to judge if the platform that is being jumped to is higher, lower, or the same height as the platform that is being jumped from. This results in frequent 'leaps of faith', where the gamer simply has to jump and hope they land on the intended platform as it is simply impossible to tell just how high up it is. Such a problem is never welcome in a platform game, and although with time it becomes slightly easier to judge platform distances and heights, there will still be moments when a jump can still be completely misjudged.
Another significant weak point of the game is the boss battles. Throughout the adventure the player will be faced with a total of five bosses, none of which are particularly inspiring and lack any real flair or individuality. The fact that the boss battles always consist of one of two characters; Mecha-Grunty or Klungo, certainly doesn't help add any variety at all. All of the boss stages are played in the same fashion; the player must avoid the boss whilst it fires it's weapon for a few seconds and is protected by a shield, the boss then moves around for a few seconds releasing it's shield and the player must then attack. The bosses aren't terrible, but they just aren't as original as one would expect from a Rare title.
Lifespan:
The biggest area of complaint that lies within Grunty's Revenge is its lifespan. The game takes around five hours to complete, which, whilst it sounds short, is comparable to many other Game Boy Advance platformers. The game's length isn't really the problem though, it's the lack of replay value. Whilst some players will miss a number of collectables from some of the stages, due to the jiggie and musical note collection requirements to earn new moves and access new areas, once the game has been completed there is very little the player hasn't seen or done already. After completing the game the only unlockable extra is the ability to play through the different minigames at any time. These minigames can be unlocked by collecting gold coins during the game's closing credits. Other than that, it would have been nice if Rare had included some sort of multiplayer options as originally intended. Even just giving the option to play through the minigames with a friend would have added a little more replay value to the title.
Graphics:
In true Rare fashion, Banjo Kazooie: Grunty's Revenge is a beautiful looking game. All of the levels are rich in colour and detail and provide a great backdrop to the game's quirky charm. All of the character sprites are similarly colourful and have a distinct 3D feel thanks to a good number of frames of pre-rendered animation. The only flaw with the graphics is, as previously mentioned, the frequent inability to judge the distance and height of platforms, which doesn't make the game any less attractive to look at, but certainly hurts the gameplay.
Sound/Music:
As much effort that went into creating this game's sound and music as the visuals. Grunty's Revenge features a typically quirky soundtrack, with a different theme to accompany each different area. Many of the sounds from the N64 titles have been faithfully brought across and add further charm. Much like the N64 titles, the in game dialogue is accompanied by 'nonsense talk' sound effects, which add a little character to the different creatures that are met in the game. All of the sounds are clear and sharp and suit the game perfectly.
Closing Comments:
Banjo Kazooie: Grunty's Revenge certainly isn't the best game to grace the Game Boy Advance, but the short lifespan and perspective issues don't really stop the game from being incredibly fun to play whilst it lasts. The game's excellent presentation in the form of decent visuals, music and sound samples, together with a solid gameplay structure that rewards the player's collecting efforts with new moves and stages all help to ensure that you'll be playing it through right until the end. With the time that has passed between the announcement of Grunty's Revenge in 2001 and its eventual release, it is hard not to question that the game's shortcomings (the poor boss design, low replay value and perspective issues) could have been ironed out. As it stands, Banjo Kazooie: Grunty's Revenge is certainly a decent effort at capturing the original N64 titles charm, and fans of the series will definitely want to give it a play through, but you can't help but feel a little disappointed considering how long we have been kept waiting for the game's release.
