Tag Archives: Collectathon

Banjo-Kazooie Review

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You know that feeling when you see a really good sweater outside but when you turn it around to purchase you see that they just went a little too crazy on the design? That’s this game in a nutshell, the gameplay is actually really solid and a ton of effort was put into the game. Then….the game fumbles the ball in the end by adding the collectathon elements. I should note that no game absolutely needs to be a collectathon. In fact most would be better off without it.

So the game starts with Banjo’s sister being kidnapped by the evil witch Gruntilda. She surprisingly puts up a decent fight but ultimately it is not enough to win and so Banjo and his pal Kazooie have to go and rescue her. To do this they will have to find various puzzle pieces and musical notes to unlock doors in Gruntilda’s lair and get to the end. It won’t be easy by any means but they are ready to pull out the win and do what has to be done. Will they really be able to get past all of her traps though?

The writing for the game is pretty fun with Kazooie constantly picking fights and generally being the biggest jerk you’ve ever seen. I really like that about his character particularly because it’s something that you just don’t see a lot of in these classic platformers. Usually everyone is super nice which is intentional because platformers are supposed to be fairly heart warming stories for the masses. So adding a little wit here was a good idea and gradually more games would continue that approach. There’s a lot of solid dialogue throughout and the sound effects each character makes instead of voice acting was also intense.

The graphics are definitely really sharp here. The game looks nice and has aged really well. It reminds me a lot of Mario 64 in a good way right from the stage designs to the sound effects and everything. I actually think Banjo sounds like Mario. The game is ahead of its time in this area and the soundtrack is also pretty solid. There are a good variety of tracks to be found here and each one helps get you invested into the stage. It’s also helpful for the quiz at the end which asks you questions about which theme belongs to which stage. That quiz definitely doesn’t hold back with how difficult it is.

The core gameplay is a fairly basic 3D platformer. You run and jump as you clear challenges and get your puzzle pieces. You gradually learn new abilities in each world so you can get used to them and aren’t too overwhelmed at the start. You can become invincible, fly, shoot eggs, etc. It makes for a pretty well rounded experience since there is just so much that you can do and of course that means there is also a greater variety in the kinds of puzzles that the game can challenge you with. Finding some of the puzzles can really take you a long while as you figure out what the game wants you to do.

Now is where the game falters a bit though. Granted, I knew that the game was part collectathon but that’s fine because I was ready for this. On average I would get around 7/10 of the puzzle pieces in a world and I would get around 80/100 of the musical notes. Pretty good I must say, however before getting to the final boss I was blocked by a door that said I needed 94 puzzle pieces to unlock the final boss fight. Why? That’s an incredible amount of pieces, that means getting 10/10 in almost every world. For example there are 100 puzzle pieces in the entire game so you’re basically telling me to 100% the title. That’s not cool when you’re just trying to beat the game.

Collecting bonus stuff should unlock a post game cutscene or some kind of really cool bonus content. I don’t even care how awesome the bonus content is, lock that behind 100% and it’s totally legitimate. What is not cool is locking the main story ending behind it. It meant I had to go back to every world and spend a ton of time there. Then you also need to collect a ton of musical notes in each world to get to the final boss too and that was also rough. At least with the puzzle pieces you can grab them and go home. For the musical notes you always start at 0 when you enter the level so that means starting the collecting from scratch every time. Come onnnnnn.

So yeah this really hurt the game tremendously because that’s way too much replaying. A similar thing ended up hurting another N64 title I was playing but I’ll go more into that in the future. Banjo is a super polished game but the collecting gives it artificial length that it didn’t need. It holds the whole experience back because at first it was a whole lot of fun and then this happened and became more of a chore. You aren’t able to just enjoy the levels anymore, you have to find every secret and be careful not to die or you lose all your progress on the notes.

The final boss is definitely well designed though. It’s crazy hard with a ton of phases so it’s a nice reward for having gotten all of the pieces. Kudos to the folks who managed to beat it without access points because it’s extremely hard to dodge the attacks in the final phase. Gruntilda smashed my health points multiple times with that one and I probably had at least 60-70 game overs there. It almost felt like she would be predicting your movements when you would give her your back so facing her all of the time is definitely the best play. Slow and steady is literally the way to win this match.

Overall, Banjo-Kazooie is definitely a legendary game. It’s one that everyone still remembers to this day and for good reason. It does operate on a high level for most of its modes and campaign but ultimately having to go back to each level and get the collectibles took a lot of the wind out of its sails. Particularly with the massive hub world requiring a lot of running around and trying not to get lost. I’d still recommend checking this game out but don’t leave a world until you’ve 100% cleared it. It’ll save you time in the long run since leaving will cause the level to reset although granted some levels may be impossible initially if you don’t have the right power up so that could be another snag…..will see if the sequel keeps up this approach or lessens the restrictions a bit.

Overall 6/10

Nexomon: Extinction Review

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Okay it’s time to talk about Nexomon, a game that I picked up on a whim and it turned out to be way better than I was expecting. The story is absolutely epic and a nice change of pace after playing through Need for Speed (2015). In a lot of ways it’s sort of what you could picture Pokemon doing if they ever decided to make a story that was a little more Shonen like in nature. There are certainly a whole lot of twists in this one so by the end you know that you were in a huge RPG.

The game starts out by explaining that the Nexomon and Dragons were in a big war a long time ago. The humans didn’t fare too well in the crossfire but eventually a group did manage to destroy Omnicron, the king of the monsters. The world went into a state of relative peace afterwards but the Tyrants continue to spawn and while the humans do their best to fight, every day is a never ending battle. This can’t be how humanity was supposed to live. In comes Terry (You choose the main character’s name) and he aims to become a guild fighter who will climb up the ranks. Can he save this world?

One of the many reasons why the story is so good is because of all the factions here. You have the humans, the Nexomon, the higher Nexomon known as the Tyrants, the kids of Omnicron, the Dragons, etc. Everyone is mixed in here and the Earth can only take so many factions so naturally there is a lot of action all the time. The game also asks you a lot of moral questions as you have to wonder if you are on the right side at all. I would even go as far as to say the game hints you are on the wrong side for a good chunk of the second half and I would say yes.

Now you are technically presented as doing the right thing at least in as far as you’re seeing things from the main character’s point of view but at the same time you also know that the arguments made in favor of his side are usually used by the villains. Basically the heroes fear the birth of a new creature called Vados who will end up wiping out all Tyrants in the world. This is actually the goal of the heroes so that sounds good right? Well the issue is that Vados is so powerful that he can wipe out all Tyrants in the blink of an eye so if he ever turned rogue then the heroes would be in trouble. Sounds similar to how Lex Luthor views Superman eh? Think about it in that context and it makes everything very interesting.

The game also doesn’t take the easy way out by making Vados a mindless creature or one who is super evil. He is actually fully sentient and even says several times that he will not harm the humans. He just seems like a good guy and as the heroes keep pushing him farther and farther you wonder if he will be able to stay strong or not. The writing here is excellent in how the game never makes any side appear to be too deranged and both sides have a lot of good points throughout the adventure. Throw in some clever 4th wall breaks as well as a lot of witty dialogue and you’ve got yourself a very engaging script. This would make for a really solid anime all the way through if it ever got animated.

Now the gameplay is also important of course so lets get into that. It’s basically Pokemon as you fight in turn based combat battles and catch Nexomon to add to your collection. The type advantages are a little different so you will need to get used to that and the way you catch Nexomon is similar to catching Pokemon but still a bit different as you have to match the right actions on the screen in order to effectively throw the Nexotrap. You can also increase the odds of success by feeding Nexomon or using a specific type of trap. As you play through the game you also get a lot stronger thanks to passive items with permanent boosts like EXP going up by 3% or your catch rates going up. Each one stacks so you really want to open every treasure chest that you can find.

The gameplay is very smooth and is probably one of the better Pokemon homages that I’ve seen in a while. The hubworld is really solid and a nice feature here is that monster encounters only happen in specific patches of grass that you see ahead of time. So you don’t have to be constantly worrying about running away from monsters as you can safely avoid them almost 100% of the time. There are a few select areas like some caves where random encounters will happen but these are few and far between. You can expect that you won’t be seeing these very much at all. So you’ve got quite a few quality of life updates here.

One edge Pokemon does have though is the EXP share system. It feels so odd to go back to only leveling up one Nexomon at a time. I’m glad there is only a trophy for getting one of them to level 99 and not a bunch because that would be a lot of work. I got one of mine to around level 70 so I don’t think it’ll be too hard to get it to 99. You do have cores you can synthesize which allow other Nexomon to get at least some EXP per battle though. So if you grind and get enough materials then eventually you can make your own pseudo EXP share.

So yeah you should have a lot of fun with the gameplay. As more and more games turn to a real time action combat system, it can be fun to go back to the more retro turn based style sometimes. I’ll never turn down real time action of course but I also really like turn based. Why not both as they would say right? This one still has a whole lot of relevance within the video gaming world and as long as it’s done smoothly then it will always work out. At most you could say that one thing the game is lacking is that the opponent can switch Nexomon after one is defeated while you cannot. Feels like a bit of an unfair advantage in the game and considering that in Pokemon both trainers can do this, it felt like an odd change. I always thought the computer was basically cheating a bit tbh.

The difficulty can be a little high at times so you should know that you will be grinding at some points within the game. It is basically inevitable but at the same time you can really focus on one and not worry about the other. The game’s enemies scale up so as you level up, so does everyone else in the game. Wild Nexomon, trainers, etc. So just get one Nexomon really high up and then catch 5 others to make up a team of super powerful fighters. If you do that then you will already be in a good spot and will stay that way for the rest of the game. Also make sure you at least use some strategy because the final boss is actually really difficult and has more phases than your average RPG final boss. Now that was an impressive way to end the game and if I had skipped out on any training then I may have been in trouble.

Overall, Nexomon: Extinction is a great game that I definitely recommend. It had one of the best stories that I’ve seen in a while and the developers did a great job with a fairly low budget. There may not have been big animated cutscenes here but the illustrations were all very well done and so were the sprite based animations within the gameplay. They showed more creativity with these than I’ve seen some AAA titles use. You really felt like the world was alive by the end of the game and it nailed the mix of humor and action. This is the kind of game you can play for hours without worry because of how smooth everything is. Definitely check it out and hopefully they get that sequel in quick!

Overall 8/10