Banjo-Kazooie (N64) Review

Date purchased: June 7, 2011
Price paid: $29.99
Dates played: July to Aug. 2017
Playtime: ~31h
Date reviewed: July 4, 2017
Date posted: Jan. 24, 2023
Rating: 4/10

Got all 100 jigsaw pieces and all 900 notes. Took me about 15-20 tries to beat the end boss.

A decent game ruined by awful underwater controls and a terrible camera. Being unable to move the camera around in several areas causes you to be stuck with the entire screen being filled by a wall or ceiling. The main hub is just an annoying, convoluted mess. The "game show" right before the ending is just dumb (I hope you're not deaf, as certain squares will be a 1-in-3 chance of guessing correctly). The humor in the game was terrible. What's the point of having lives? Like with Super Mario 64, when you save and quit, then come back to it, you'll be back to the default 3 lives. If you get down to your last life, you might as well just save and reload so you automatically get 3 lives. Basically, whenever I started having any fun with it, either an atrocious underwater segment popped up or I needed to head into the hub. I definitely lost all interest in hunting down Banjo-Tooie.