I must start this out by saying I am a Banjo-Kazooie virgin.  I never played any of those games as I never even owned a Nintendo 64.  I am unable to make any comparisons between the past games, but thankfully this one is completely different.  No real platforming elements exist, it is all about the vehicles.

When you fire up the demo, you must sit through a fairly boring explanation of the game, no “press start” to skip.  A few basic walk-throughs commence after all of the beginning junk and eventually you are able to try out the game.  For some reason, I am still upset with just how long it actually takes to start the demo.  I understand that they must introduce the game to us, but it seriously took what seemed to be an eternity just to start playing the game.

The game itself is actually entertaining.  You are given a basic vehicle in the demo along with the opportunity to upgrade vehicles with some basic parts.  In the beginning, you are able to coast around the town and just explore, some areas are blocked off but it gives you a decent enough feel for the layout.  The actual worlds that you will be competing in are through doors that you must open up by collecting jiggies, or jigsaw puzzle pieces to the rest of us.  Seems right down Rare’s alley to make you collect stuff, doesn’t it?

In the single world you get to explore in the demo, there is quite a lot of variety.  These worlds are fairly large and you need a map just to get around, definitely something I wasn’t expecting.  You are than able to do various challenges like time trials, races, even a little bit of vehicular soccer.  Like I stated earlier, this game is all about the vehicles.  You can construct vehicles to do exactly what it is you need to accomplish for the challenges.  Need to push a ball into a soccer goal?  You can create a vehicle to do exactly that.  The vehicles themselves don’t exactly handle that well, which is extremely odd for a game based around them.  From the limited time I spent playing with the parts, I was able to create some interesting machines.  I can see the creativity that some folks will put to good use.

The graphics looked extremely crisp, especially for the style of game.  I was amazed by some of the textures and water effects. The character models are a bit wonky but it works.  By no means is this Gears of War 2, but it does the job.

Banjo-Kazooie Nuts and Bolts isn’t a platformer and it isn’t just a racing game, just keep that in mind before playing the demo.  The game isn’t exactly up my alley, but it did keep my interest long enough to get by all of the annoying cut-scenes, so if that isn’t convincing enough, I guess this demo isn’t for you.