My first introduction to Rare was back in the mid 90’s with the Donkey Kong Country games that I had for my SNES along with Killer Instinct in the arcades and they quickly became one of my favourite developers. Then in 1997 they brought out what I still to this day hold as the best game I have ever played; Goldeneye on the N64. I loved Goldeneye but after playing it I realized that I was starting to grow up from ‘cutesy’ games, I still enjoyed playing Super Mario 64 but I had forever been turned into an FPS junkie. So when Banjo Kazooie came out I never bothered to pick it up, I remember watching a few demos in my local games shop and not being interested at all. So here I am 10 years on reviewing it for Live Arcade so I must admit this is the first time I have ever played it, and I am not impressed at all.

I recently dug out my old N64 and had a quick go on Super Mario 64 and found the game to still be very enjoyable and it has aged well but I cannot say the same for Banjo Kazooie. The game has many similarities to Mario 64, just nowhere near as good though. The controls are rather limited and Banjo feels sluggish when he jumps and swims, the camera controls are sticky and not particularly easy to rotate around, getting a good view of your surroundings can be annoying. The textures in the game world seem dull and lifeless  too, I know this may all seem a bit harsh for a game that was made 10 years ago and I’m sure Rare did the best they could with the tools they had at the time but at the end of the day this game just feels like 2 steps back from the awesome Mario 64. The later levels have some very frustrating game play elements and this is all for a hefty price tag of 1,200 points. Those of you looking for a trip down an N64 memory lane will be sorely disappointed with this title.