I've been in a retro mood so I've been replaying Banjo-Kazooie on the N64.
I first played the game over twenty years ago, but I have to confess I was never Rare's biggest fan. Sure, their games always looked great, but I never thought they had the gameplay to back it up – give me Super Mario World and Yoshi's Island over the Donkey Kong Country games any day.
That being said, when I first started playing it I was surprised at how much fun it was. It was better than I remember, even allowing for its age. The camera engine is annoying and the swimming mechanics are tiresome, but still, I persevered. The early levels were fun, and I was making good progress with getting all the Jiggies and Notes without it being an unnecessary chore... and then I got to the fourth world, Bubblegloop Swamp, and Jesus H Christ. This level is so monumentally awful that it singlehandedly made me give up on the game twenty years ago, and it is still an absolute bastard now. There is a fine line between "challenging" and "tedious", and this game dances over that line too often. There's too many points where the programmers clearly think they're being clever, but instead they're just being plain mean. The game shouldn't actively discourage you.
Still, this time I persevered – I'm playing on an emulator now which helps enormously, because if I'd properly had to restart each level from the beginning every time I died I'd have given up again – and finally got through to the end. Some of the later levels are also real slogs (Mad Monster Mansion and Rusty Bucket Bay, ugh). Other later levels are challenging but rewarding (Freezeezy Peak and Click Clock Wood, and arguably Gruntilda's Lair itself). The game show challenge at the end is... certainly original, but also verges more towards "tedious" than "challenging". And yes, I got all 100 Jiggies and all 900 Notes, so I unlocked the true ending afterwards.
Overall I'd call it a flawed masterpiece. I still think Super Mario 64 is the better 3D platformer on the N64, though I will concede that Banjo-Kazooie is much prettier. But I can now at least see what other people like about it, even if I remain much less enthusiastic. I'm undecided as to whether I'll play Banjo-Tooie. Maybe I'll go try something else as a palate cleanser first.
The story is kinda meh and can easily be skipped (if you don't like it) but the gameplay is fun.
