|
I liked this game as a kid. Mostly for dicking around with the vehicle building, admittedly. Never did make a Kinetikos of my own, though...
|
#
?
Nov 4, 2022 05:14
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 12, 2024 05:08 |
|
|
Seeing this makes me wonder what would have happened if Banjo-X was actually developed and released rather than Nuts & Bolts.
|
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2022 00:18
|
|
|
The heavens would have opened, nintendo would have closed in shame, and we would all enter into a new history in video games. Or more likely given rare at this point and from what they put out here: we would have gotten yooka laylee sooner, a game that was clearly a labor of love with some cool levels and a crapton of gameplay flaws.
|
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2022 00:24
|
|
|
Nuts and Bolts is cool in theory, but the problem is the actual challenges it has you doing with the vehicles you make are all so boring.
|
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2022 07:21
|
|
|
I think the writing's fine. I'm not going to take personal offense to them poking fun at their old games.
|
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2022 07:33
|
|
|
Hey we're back!  On a rainy night two years after the defeat of the conniving witch Gruntilda, a giant drilling machine piloted by the evil witch's sisters wreaks havoc on Spiral Mountain, freeing Grunty from the hole in the ground she'd been trapped under ever since the end of the titular bird and bear's first adventure. Seeking revenge, Grunty interrupts Banjo and Kazooie's poker night, destroying their home and killing Bottles in the process before fleeing to the Isle o' Hags. Following the success of 1998's Banjo-Kazooie, it was only natural that Rare would greenlight a sequel. Immediately after the release of the original title, Rare got right to work on Banjo-Tooie, working hard to refine and improve the foundation the first game laid out. Released in 2000 for the N64 and 2008 for the Xbox 360, Banjo-Tooie's levels are bigger and more expansive and there are even more moves and ways to scour the worlds to collect more and more Jiggies and notes! The game's scope is so massive, the poor N64 struggles to run it, at times! This is not an issue with the Xbox 360 port, however, although the smoothed out framerate does cause some desync issues of its own. Lots of appreciated quality-of-life features have been implemented as well, such as a few different fast travel systems and collected notes being recorded in the player's save file. As these QOL features apply to all versions, we will be playing the N64 version for this LP, as I did not want to buy an Xbox.  This will be a blind LP where I run through the game under the guidance of my co-commentators Artix and Silver Falcon. As a blind LP, it should hopefully go without saying but  NO SPOILERS. Updates should ideally be twice-a-week, but no promises. You can follow me on Twitter for updates to this LP or other projects I might be working on while the service seemingly still exists. 
|
|
#
?
Mar 15, 2023 02:30
|
|
|
Hurray! Was hoping this was gonna happen. I like this one more than the first game.
|
|
#
?
Mar 15, 2023 03:22
|
|
|
Ah, that moment after you used the flight pax. It's like the series never paused. This is a very fun game, but I prefer the tightness and organization of the design of the first game to this one.
|
|
#
?
Mar 15, 2023 03:22
|
|
|
 Tooie is 10-15% too much game but I like it more than Kazooie I think. Have fun!
|
|
#
?
Mar 15, 2023 03:28
|
|
|
Banjo-Tooie is too big for its own good, I feel. It's not as extreme as DK64, but I still feel that there's too many collectibles, too many moves, too many overly involved 'sidequests' and whatnot. Still a good game, but I feel a distinct step down in overall quality from B-K.
|
|
#
?
Mar 15, 2023 03:28
|
|
|
Your flying skills are still a massive shame; terrible even after all the practice from the first game!
|
|
#
?
Mar 15, 2023 03:29
|
|
|
When I was a kid and first played Tooie, I felt like Milhouse waiting for the interminable intro to end. All I wanted to do was run around and collect stuff and what I got, instead, was so many cutscenes I didn't care about. Returned it to the rental place before getting to the first world because they just wouldn't stop.
|
|
#
?
Mar 15, 2023 03:29
|
|
|
Fun fact: Take a look at Banjo's shadow on the ground. It's shaped like him! The last game used a circular blot. Heck, most N64 games do that. Rare went all out for this one.
|
|
#
?
Mar 15, 2023 07:20
|
|
|
Good God. Am I right in thinking the first game came out two years before this one, like it says in the opening? A flipping quarter-century has passed between then and now.
|
|
#
?
Mar 15, 2023 07:48
|
|
|
Personally I like Tooie and its bigger levels better, but I understand why some don't. The levels are more variable in quality, though. Music still slaps. The track we hear for three seconds at the very end of this video is one of my favourite tracks of all time. MikeJF fucked around with this message at 08:40 on Mar 15, 2023 |
|
#
?
Mar 15, 2023 08:33
|
|
|
As someone who's only played the 360 version, drat those pixels look goood Banjo Tooie is both a far more impressive and far worse game.
|
|
#
?
Mar 15, 2023 10:49
|
|
|
20+ years since I played this... ...and I don't remember Cheato or fighting Klungo before you got into the game proper. Huh. Probably just didn't leave much impression in the end compared to everything else. Ignatius M. Meen fucked around with this message at 12:37 on Mar 15, 2023 |
|
|
#
?
Mar 15, 2023 12:34
|
|
|
Cythereal posted:Banjo-Tooie is too big for its own good, I feel. It's not as extreme as DK64, but I still feel that there's too many collectibles, too many moves, too many overly involved 'sidequests' and whatnot. We'll see once we get there but honestly there's very few new moves, mostly just "here is some stuff you probably should have been able to do in the first game" QoL updates (one of the moves in the first level is probably the most glaring example). And while they are more spread out due to the levels being bigger, there's actually *significantly less* collectables per level. Notes now come in bunches of 5 instead of singles so that's down from 100 to 20, and Mumbo tokens have been replaced with a two-per-level collectable, with the only actual new addition being Cheato pages. I'm not gonna sit here and advocate for DK64 but if anything they should have had *more* collectables.
|
|
#
?
Mar 15, 2023 12:40
|
|
|
I don't think I ever actually finished Tooie. Couldn't hack the step up in complexity. Have fun!
|
|
#
?
Mar 15, 2023 12:57
|
|
|
Beartaco posted:As someone who's only played the 360 version, drat those pixels look goood I should mention that this is technically not how the game looks on vanilla hardware! I'm using a gameshark code to remove one of the two layers of anti-aliasing that the N64 applies to basically everything so the game should look just a touch sharper than it would normally. I'd remove the other layer too if I could, but I did not opt to mod my N64 with one of those HDMI mods that has de-blur as an option, we're just on straight S-Video piped into a RetroTINK 5X for this ride.
|
|
#
?
Mar 15, 2023 13:00
|
|
|
Oh come on, early fuzzy blurry AA is an essential part of the N64 vibe.
|
|
#
?
Mar 15, 2023 13:07
|
|
|
Having both layers of the N64's hardware AA enabled would also hide the dithering artifacts we're seeing on things like the sky in the intro.
|
|
#
?
Mar 15, 2023 14:44
|
|
|
sebzilla posted:I don't think I ever actually finished Tooie. Couldn't hack the step up in complexity. I confess I haven't either. I made it all the way to the final boss and couldn't figure out how to beat the last phase. Talk about stumbling at the finish line... Really wish they'd put it on NSO so I could revisit it! I don't own an XBox.
|
|
#
?
Mar 15, 2023 15:35
|
|
|
It has just occurred to me that I could have bought a Series S or an Xbone for maybe about as much money as I spent on the EverDrive. I am genuinely unsure which would be a better buy. 
|
|
#
?
Mar 15, 2023 15:43
|
|
|
Well now you can play Jiggies of Time on hardware when you're done with Tooie.
|
|
#
?
Mar 15, 2023 17:16
|
|
|
ChaosArgate posted:I should mention that this is technically not how the game looks on vanilla hardware! I'm using a gameshark code to remove one of the two layers of anti-aliasing that the N64 applies to basically everything so the game should look just a touch sharper than it would normally. I'd remove the other layer too if I could, but I did not opt to mod my N64 with one of those HDMI mods that has de-blur as an option, we're just on straight S-Video piped into a RetroTINK 5X for this ride. Wait, N64 games looking like muddy messes was a feature, not a limitation?
|
|
#
?
Mar 16, 2023 06:45
|
|
|
Yeah, the N64 was the first console with anti-aliasing. We often don't really remember just how bad the aliasing was on the PSX, but being muddy but not having massive obvious jaggy lines on every edge was considered by many an improvement.
|
|
#
?
Mar 16, 2023 07:24
|
|
|
Such heavy anti-aliasing at those low resolutions is a bit overkill but having perspective-correct and filtered textures and a Z-buffer was a big advantage. There was usually none of that texture and polygon wobble you'd see on the PlayStation (and on the rare occasion there was some of that, like on the mountains in GoldenEye 007's Dam level, the AA hid it really well), so things just looked nice and solid despite the blurriness. Quake on the N64 actually has an in-game toggle for one of the AA passes, and I wish more games would've done that. DMorbid fucked around with this message at 19:49 on Mar 16, 2023 |
|
#
?
Mar 16, 2023 07:52
|
|
|
Tooie was my first Banjo game and going to the original after felt like rear end. Especially the note collection. Tooie could've done with being a bit less game, but it's nowhere near as egregious as DK 64 was.
|
|
#
?
Mar 16, 2023 09:51
|
|
|
Artix posted:We'll see once we get there but honestly there's very few new moves, mostly just "here is some stuff you probably should have been able to do in the first game" QoL updates (one of the moves in the first level is probably the most glaring example). And while they are more spread out due to the levels being bigger, there's actually *significantly less* collectables per level. Notes now come in bunches of 5 instead of singles so that's down from 100 to 20, and Mumbo tokens have been replaced with a two-per-level collectable, with the only actual new addition being Cheato pages. I'm not gonna sit here and advocate for DK64 but if anything they should have had *more* collectables. Tooie, at least to me, has the same flaw that DK64 did, which isn't necessarily number of collectibles but the requirement for backtracking. Kazooie has one tremendous strength. You can go into a level, do everything, come out and that level is done. The only time you ever have to backtrack is the Boggy race with the speed boots. Areas can become easier if you've gone ahead (Mr. Vile), but they are not impossible. In Tooie, as we'll see, you have to jump back and forth constantly between levels. Your first run through many will involve a lot of things you just can't do because you don't have moves. I argue this leads to the perception of there being more collectibles because your mental load is a lot heavier. "I have to remember this area in x world and come back to it if I ever find y." Further it weakens the game because sometimes you might perceive there to be a solution you have to come back for, when you've just not seen the right solution that's available. A lot of the connectivity is pretty cool in some ways, but I've always favoured the system where you can just finish something and not worry about it going forward for most platform games.
|
|
#
?
Mar 16, 2023 14:15
|
|
|
 Going live a day early with this one because I'm about to hop on a 14 hour flight. And here's a bonus video, with a peek of an idea I had for presenting the temple of Jiggywiggy.
|
|
#
?
Mar 16, 2023 18:00
|
|
|
I see someone on the music team was a fan of Luigi Denza, going by that musical lick in the Bottle's household.
|
|
#
?
Mar 17, 2023 09:57
|
|
|
Artix posted:Notes now come in bunches of 5 instead of singles so that's down from 100 to 20 Notes includes one 20-note treble clef every level, so it's actually down to 17.
|
|
#
?
Mar 17, 2023 15:58
|
|
|
We're lucky that Grunty needs to wait for B.O.B. to charge, the length of time is strangely variable yet large. Wait, we're not doing that anymore? Stop my posting gimmick then, I must.
|
|
#
?
Mar 18, 2023 01:16
|
|
|
liquidypoo posted:We're lucky that Grunty needs to wait for B.O.B. to charge, the length of time is strangely variable yet large. Don't worry - I'll go and take up the crown; Banjo needs rhymes to bring Grunty down.
|
|
#
?
Mar 18, 2023 01:25
|
|
|
Quackles posted:Don't worry - I'll go and take up the crown;   
Artix fucked around with this message at 03:20 on Mar 18, 2023 |
|
#
?
Mar 18, 2023 03:01
|
|
|
I'm not the biggest expert by any means, but are Grunty's sisters speaking in trochaic tetrameter? That's what old Will used for the witches in Macbeth, and this dialogue feels similar.
|
|
#
?
Mar 18, 2023 03:27
|
|
|
Natural 20 posted:Tooie, at least to me, has the same flaw that DK64 did, which isn't necessarily number of collectibles but the requirement for backtracking. Different strokes, of course, but as a kid especially, I also didn't expect to even be able to solve everything immediately. Maybe a boss would kick my rear end, so I'd come back later with more health. Or different ammo types. Maybe I couldn't solve a puzzle so I'd go "you know what, I'll figure that out later". Maybe I would just wander through levels to enjoy the music, trying to find areas I hadn't yet to tick off the last jiggies. Backtracking and replaying was just extremely normal to me, and I think expecting to be able to 100% everything on the first go is a bit of a fallacy - it's like the compulsion to immediately do a no-kill full-stealth run of Dishonored or Metal Gear Solid or Hitman. Just because you know the game makes it possible to do so and you want to find out how! Now! Instead of first learning the mechanics and going with the flow. I am not immune to this, by the way, it's a tough challenge in game desing for sure.
|
|
#
?
Mar 18, 2023 14:06
|
|
|
The best thing is that Grunty was conciously rhyming and coming up with them on the spot.
|
|
#
?
Mar 18, 2023 15:06
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 12, 2024 05:08 |
|
|
Judge Tesla posted:The best thing is that Grunty was conciously rhyming and coming up with them on the spot. Grunty's rapping career was tragically ended early by the philistines of spiral mountain.
|
|
#
?
Mar 18, 2023 15:36
|
|
