(06-16-2019, 02:02 AM)DrHouse64 Wrote: I'm not a fan of Rare games, except Goldeneye.
The big problem for me when I tried out Banjo, is that this game is literally Not Mario 64 in a lot of aspects and I just couldn't get over it. And the sound design and soundtrack was... special. Not my taste at all.
I only tried the first one, not the second one.
If you can't like the first one, then you definitely won't like the second one.
Bigger, better and connectivity is the name of the sequel. Banjo-Tooie doubles on the amount of moves (with the biggest addition being the Split Up Move, turning Banjo and Kazooie into separate characters), introduces new collectible types, has a dozen of bosses, and more.
Unlike the original game, all worlds are now connected to each other in one way or another, even allowing you to move between worlds without going through the hub world first.
However... The sequel has some drawbacks. Due being bigger the worlds are of course bigger, and I mean colossal (back on the N64, these worlds are unparalleled in size, but in today's standards more about standard in size). And bigger worlds mean more traversing, a lot more traversing, resulting in the addition of warp pads. If you didn't enjoy exploring worlds in the original, then you definitely won't enjoy it in the sequel. There is certainly some backtracking at times. Sometimes a bit overwhelming. And you frequently encounter scenes throughout the game. Impressive as they are, these can bring down the pace at times. The worlds are so complex in that you have to complete puzzles and learn moves in other worlds first before you can complete the prior worlds, which is both mind-boggling and at times tedious. I was really like: "Wow! So all along I was in a different world!" during a sequence in already the first world when I progressed a few worlds further.
And the soundtrack was just sublime and varied. You thought a single audio track was enough for each world? Literally each sound track came in a dozen of variants you could hum along to. The first world had a different variation for each of the areas: Underwater, Mumbo's Hut Area, Ticker's Tower, Inside Ticker's Tower, Conga's Patch and the main variation. The main hub has at least eleven variations. You definitely don't see Super Mario 64 do this. And each variation of the soundtrack seamlessly switched over. It was just crazy for it's time. And that's just Banjo-Kazooie. Rare did that again for at least it's sequel and Donkey Kong 64. I always found myself humming along. The Super Mario 64 soundtrack was exceptional as well, but I really need to hand it over to Grant Kirkhope, the composer for Rareware back then.
When Banjo-Tooie came out, the game's worlds were so incredible large I honestly believed it would have required the 4 MB Memory Expansion Pak. Donkey Kong 64 required it after all, and that game was already huge. But Rareware actually managed to get Banjo-Tooie to work without the Expansion Pak.
You really need to like to collect a thon of stuff. Hence the name Collect-A-Thon. It was practically invented by Rareware. Super Mario 64 had you only collect 120 stars. But that wasn't really unique. Games had always been around getting from the start to your goal, except this time the goal isn't the end of the stage but an item. One of the cleverest things Super Mario 64 invented was collecting 100 coins. This changed everything. Suddenly coins had more value than just for score and healing. Suddenly a game had more than one meaningful item for progression to collect. Suddenly the game's world could be padded out with coins everywhere incentivizing the player to explore. Collecting 100 Notes in Banjo-Kazooie really came from Super Mario 64, but Banjo-Kazooie just took it a step further. Moves were suddenly a collectible, 5 Jinjo's which served as the 8 Red Coins served as one of the 10 Jiggies to collect, Switches with Gruntilda's Face were suddenly worth looking for, Mumbo Tokens for transformations, Empty Honeycombs to boost your health, replenishable items such as feathers and eggs. Instead of using Notes to unlock a Jiggy they were being used to unlock new area's instead. Even unlocking worlds went further than how Super Mario 64 did it. Mario simply had to approach a door with a sufficient amount of stars, and voila, but in Banjo-Kazooie they added a gameplay mechanic to it, fleshed out even further in the sequel. Did I mention that the sequel had even more collectables? And if that wasn't enough, the Banjo games were a champion in secrets. Secrets, secrets and secrets everywhere, with actual impact and value. And I can continue for hours, like how Banjo-Kazooie dwarfed Super Mario 64's castle in comparison with it's own massive hub world. I mean, come on, it's an actual world if it didn't serve as a hub.
Sorry, Super Mario 64, as much as I love you, I simply have to hand it over to Banjo-Kazooie.
The Collect-A-Thon hype continued with Donkey Kong 64, but perhaps a bit to far. While I definitely didn't mind, the more the better, keeps me longer collecting all that stuff, a lot of players actually found it fatiguing. With five separate characters there was like five times the amount of collectables compared to Banjo-Kazooie. Each character had it's fully-scaled Collect-A-Thon quest. Yeah, I would really have liked if Donkey Kong 64 encouraged all Kongs to cooperate more rather than having each Kong do it's own thing, but still, I found it amazing. When Banjo-Tooie got released, the devs probably realized the amount of stuff to collect went a bit out of control, so they reduced it... A lot... And I mean quite a bit. Yes, there are more collectable types than ever, but the quantity of totals has been reduced. Suddenly of collecting 100 separate notes, you collect them in nests of five and one worth of 20, still to a total of 100. There's a whole world less, so that's 10 Jiggies fewer. Worlds tend to have fewer than five Jinjos. Eggs are now in nests as well, and each egg type is part of the same egg nest. The same goes for the feathers. As a result Banjo-Tooie tends to hand out collectable less generously as most of them require some kind of unlocked move, encounter, puzzle or what else, which definitely increases their sense of value when collecting them. But still, at times it can feel a bit too sparse.
Luckily, Mario is still around and has made some of the best platformers and even RPG's. Paper Mario is one of my favorite RPG's of all time, with a sequel that is even better (through it suffers from the occasional backtracking as well, like Banjo-Tooie). I honestly don't know which RPG I love more, Paper Mario, Trails in the Sky SC or CrossCode (through CrossCode definitely is a bit more Action-Adventure than RPG). Heck, even the Mario & Luigi series is outstanding, especially the first title (including the 3DS remake). Chrono Trigger is outstanding as well, but certainly no match for these masterpieces.
I don't know what it is with me. I always loved ghost, creepy or abandoned worlds, like the Big Boo's Haunt, Hazy Maze Cave and Wet Dry World from Super Mario 64, the Mad Monster Mansion from Banjo-Kazooie, the Creepy Castle from Donkey Kong 64, the Subcon Forest from A Hat in Time. Both Super Mario Galaxy games had some nice ghost worlds as well, but lacked the free-roaming from said games. And as far as I am aware, Super Mario Odyssey doesn't have one. Ohh and of course chapter 3 from Paper Mario and chapter 4 from Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door. Even better, the final chapter of Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door was just pure perfection. I always enjoyed going through the Forest Temple in Ocarina of Time, which always felt abandoned and dark. Those dungeons as Child Link? Nah, you are in for the real deal: small keys, boss keys, mini-bosses, Poes, Stalfoses and even Ganondorf himself immediately (ok ok, his Phantom). Already just entering the temple for five seconds and you are immediately greeted by a Wolfos. Stone Tower Temple from Majora's Mask and Level 7 - Eagle's Tower from Link's Awakening of course shouldn't be ignored and I can absolutely not forgot to mention City in the Sky from Twilight Princess. If it weren't for the Forest Temple then the City in the Sky would be my absolute favorite dungeon of all time. That dungeon is just part of a whole other world to experience, with a soundtrack so stellar it blows you away. Through the soundtrack itself likely won't impress you unless going through that dungeon.
So yeah, those kind of worlds definitely make my day. And Banjo-Kazooie had a lot of the unique worlds. Did I tell you about the 9th world: Click Clock Wood? Because you will experience that world again for each season. Now that's a big world. I didn't see Super Mario 64 do that. But Super Mario 64 had 15 sprawling worlds, which was a lot, especially back then. Rareware might have had the more characteristically worlds, but they had fewer of them.
But these days, Mario has since long excelled on all fronts above Banjo-Kazooie, especially with the second Paper Mario game (come on Nintendo! Remaster it! No more Color Splash!) and Galaxy games, through I would like to believe Super Mario Odyssey as well.
So yeah... Imagine my massive disappointment that Nintendo never re-released the Rareware trilogy of 3D Collect-A-Thon Platformers consisting out of Banjo-Kazooie, Banjo-Tooie and Donkey Kong 64 on the Virtual Console. Well... Donkey Kong 64 eventually got re-released on the Wii U's Virtual Console, but still. Back during the Wii I didn't think Nintendo was that well on terms with Microsoft, who took over Rareware. Imagine the idea that Microsoft would re-license their beloved Platformers on a Nintendo console. Not much of a chance. But as I mentioned previously, things might look better as of today between Microsoft and Nintendo.
And now I'm done. I should invest my time writing actual essays instead... Hehe.