Benefits immensely from dropping all that platforming nonsense.
A Bloody good vehicle based game… that's what.
There are those who have berated Rare's decision to move away from the platform genre with Nuts & Bolts but it's breathed fresh life into the series, life that was severely needed after cheap, crappy, rip off's like Ratchet & Clank sucked out of the genre on the PS2.
Nuts & Bolts retains all the charm of the original games, most of the characters and a lot of the sense of humour… all the elements you'd have expected to find are here, Jingo's, Grunty, Mumbo-Jumbo and Jigsaw pieces… just not in a platform based game.
Some people have even seen fit to criticise the game for the way the characters speak, staying true to the games roots there's very little spoken word in the game, with the sounds being translated for the player to read… only a fool or a total Banjo novice would have expected anything else… this third instalment has obviously been crafted by people who hold the series close to their own heart, but have felt the need to abandon the platforms as being so last generation.
As with the previous games the world is opened up to you slowly, not everything will be accessible from the start, you have to earn the right to get to the later levels and even jumping forward a couple of levels will mean that your garage is simply under-equipped to deal with the tasks that lie ahead.
The game is a triumph, with 30 levels (or Acts) to work your way through before the final scenes there is plenty to keep you busy, especially if you're the sort to try and grab every trophy on offer in the process.
There are plenty of nods to the previous games outside of characters with one whole Gaming World being named "Banjoland" with even more references to the past such as Clanker from the original game.
It may not be everyone's cup of tea, and it's been criminally ignored by gamers since it was released, myself included until recently, but if you were looking for some old school platform antics what the hell were you doing buying a 360 for in the first place?
The world of Banjo Kazooie has, thankfully, moved onto bigger and better things, and if you feel the need to play old, out of date, platform games either download the two originals from Xbox Live or buy a PS3 and get Ratchet instead.