Topic: Banjo-Kazooie: N&B - Update: My carousel is a winner!

[Cobra951]

I have a feeling this game is going to be a failure of heartbreaking proportions.  But the demo provides what seems like endless free entertainment.  The big problem I see is that the structure is just as kiddie as the original game's, but what you have to do to utilize the game's potential takes more advanced thought, and practice.  When I started playing, I had no clue what the hell I was expected to do.  Basically, you need to build vehicles out of parts you collect.  You start out with a few blueprints, so all you have to do is fill those in with the hardware.  But I imagine (and I hope) that later you can go more freeform than that.  I can see a lot of room for creativity in vehicle design and purpose.  You can head off to land, sea and air with them too.  The world is extremely detailed and pretty in a Rare colorful way.  Frame rate is rock stable at my least favorite number, 30.  That seems to be a practical limitation on this console, though others have broken free of it.  (E.g., Criterion.)

I don't know.  I played for a couple of hours, and still didn't see an end in sight.  You're allowed to unlock at least the first world from the hub world, and go crazy.  I see some fencing off in the hub world, but it all feels very unrestricted.  When you need a break from all the big adult games hitting left and right, try something completely different.  I'll post more if I discover more.

[Quemaqua]

You sound generally positive... why do you feel this will be such a failure?  Unfortunately I haven't played a Banjo-Kazooie game before since I never owned an N64.

[Cobra951]

I was thinking the younger kids will find it too complex while the older kids might find it too kiddie.  Don't know.  Now I'm thinking it's really good.  You can go crazy building and modifying all manner of vehicles.  It's a matter of finding parts and letting your imagination take over.  It's pretty lenient on how to hook pieces together, so there's not a lot of frustration involved.  But there is a modest learning curve.  I'd say a couple of hours minimum.

The demo has no time limits.  I just spent about 4 hours in it.  It also lets you save what you create, though I'm not sure yet if I can load them again into the demo.  They were saved to HDD, though, since it asked me where to save (and that's what I chose).  Each of the challenges lets you choose which vehicle to use.  Between tries, you can refine the vehicle.  For example I added an egg shooter and ammo to a pusher--a car shaped like a Y to push big things.  I also added an extra engine and gas tank for more power and speed.  I had to get soccer balls into the goal past these round bots that get in my way and push the balls away.  So instead of just pushing them out of the way, I was able to shoot them.

I created a boat, which kept sinking and I didn't know why.  Then I read the parts list more carefully.  The buoyancy rings can be inflated or deflated at will, so you can stay afloat or sink at will, by pressing 'A'.  Neat.  I imagine more advanced parts or designs will allow me to breathe underwater, but as is, it's a submarine where you have to hold your breath.  I was able to explore an area underwater I didn't even know was there.  Similarly, when I found a parts box with wings in it, I was able to make a plane and explore stuff way high.

Physics are very forgiving, but still make some sense.  I'm going to have to play the demo yet again, and see how else I can combine the parts.  It's also nice that what you save are blueprints, not vehicles with the parts already in place.  That way, you don't need duplicate parts.  (For instance, all cars can share the same 4 wheels.)  Good stuff, decent control.  Just takes some up-front learning.

[gpw11]

I was a pretty big fan of the first game.  My girlfriend in high school's brother had it on their massive massive television and I think I played all the way through it over a summer at one of her houses.  Awesome.  I never did play the second one though.

I was always kind of excited for BK3 to come out, but when it was announced it just seemed strange that all of a sudden there'd be this huge focus on vehicles.  It does sound cool though.

[iPPi]

Not interested.

[Cobra951]

Not interested because you think they destroyed the franchise with this approach, or because you never cared for the B-K games at all (or never played them)?

I'm not sure what to think in terms of a worthy successor to B-K and B-T.  The approach is very different, and the opening cinematics made me wince.  It's all very contrived, not that the originals were exactly great fiction.  Nuts and Bolts will have to stand on its own, or not.  We'll see.  Even if I decide I want it, there are at least 2 games ahead of it in my queue, Fallout 3 and Fable 2. 

One goodie they're pushing is the original B-K, spruced up and released on XBLA, for free with a preorder of N&B.  (Oh, the game's only $40?  Maybe even they see it having trouble grabbing an audience.)  That's a $15 bonus, for those who want to take a chance.

[gpw11]

Hmmmm, now that we're talking about this, maybe I should fire up Project 64 and take a look at Banjo-Tooie.

[iPPi]

I played Banjo Kazooie and it was a decent game.  In fact, I think I had fun with it, but I didn't really like it.  I mean gameplay wise there was nothing wrong with it, but I didn't really like the universe and the characters. 

[Cobra951]

I spent another ton of time in the demo last night.  Yes, you can save your creations.  You are limited to 3, but I discovered that you can switch storage devices very easily when saving and loading blueprints.  I have 2 memory cards and the HDD, so that's 9 total vehicle slots.  I've used them all.  My last one was an octagonal copter with 4 springs underneath.  I can launch suddenly with them, then hover around pretty well.  A lot more useful than the plane to land on small platforms high up.  Motorcycles work well too.  Exploring the possibilities is addicting.

[scottws]

Rare droprd the ball badly with this. I cannot read the text on my SDTV.

[Quemaqua]

It's getting a patch, Scott.  Originally they said it wasn't going to, but then I guess it turned out to be a huge deal and now they've said they're going to fix it.  It's basically the exact same problem that Dead Rising had, only that game never actually got a patch.  They said it would be too hard to do and left it at that, which was pretty shady I thought.  I had to switch my 360 to my LCD monitor, where it's stayed ever since because of that.

Anyway, yeah.  Patch is happening.

[scottws]

How freaking hard is it to plug a 360 into a regular TV and be like, "Yeah, this isn't going to work."  I have a huge SDTV too.  I can't imagine what it's like on a 27" set.

I don't understand how this stuff continues to be missed.  Do more 360 owners truly play on HDTVs?

[Cobra951]

Do you use composite or S-Video?  I was wondering if that would make a difference.

I can't understand what the hell has happened to QA lately.  It's not just one company that seems to be doing stupid shit like this.  I mean, you're exactly right:  How the hell hard is it to look at your product on the same kinds of screens that most of your customers are going to use?  Is it a PAL vs NTSC thing?  Rare are still in England, I think.

[gpw11]

Even then though, there's only like 4 variables to test.   I don't see how something like this really could be missed.

[Cobra951]

I'm not arguing against that.  I'm trying to fathom how it could happen at all.

[gpw11]

I'd say this was a "Eh, we'll just patch it later" thing, but that doesn't even make sense buisness wise.

[scottws]

Do you use composite or S-Video?  I was wondering if that would make a difference.

I use the included cable... so composite.

[Cobra951]

If your TV allows S-Video, it makes a significant difference.  It eliminates dot crawl (which you get if your TV doesn't have a pro-caliber comb filter) and gives you a more stable image.

[scottws]

Yeah, I know.  I don't feel like spending the money on a new 360 cable though.

[Cobra951]

After I knee-jerk posted, it hit me that you should already know all about it.  I thought of the cost and of how you don't play the 360 much anymore.  I was surprised to see you pop up briefly on XBL the other day.

[scottws]

I get on from time to time and play XBLA games like Assault Heros, Heavy Weapon, and some 1942 recreation, but I haven't played a disc-based 360 game in some time.

[Cobra951]

Rare finally implemented the photo showroom.  It lets you upload 10 of your in-game pictures.  I've uploaded 5 so far.  Link.  If you click on an image, you can download it at full resolution.  I haven't found a way to view them at full res without doing that.

This game is more fun than a barrel of bears.

[scottws]

I have tried to get into the demo a few times now but there is a huge barrier: I don't know what the heck to do because I can't read the damned text!

[Cobra951]

The 5th poster here gets my admiration.  Cool stuff.  I've been going for functionality, but now I want to try making stuff like that.

Sorry about the text problem, Scott.  That has to be frustrating.


Curse you, Red Baron!

[scottws]

Well, it's frustrating, but at least it's a demo.  But yeah it's basically a lost sale.  Rare has no chance whatsoever to earn money from me to do their massive blunder.

[Quemaqua]

Not even with a patch?  That's more than other companies in the past have done with it.

[scottws]

I don't care.  It speaks to a certain incompetence on their part and I already have a sour taste in my mouth.

[Cobra951]

Oh, so awesome.  I got NXE today, and immediately installed the game to the HDD.  After launching it, the DVD drive stopped spinning completely.  No more vibrating desk or constant noise.  Just the fans.  Load times are significantly faster.  With this tiny hard drive, I can only do this to one disc game at a time.  I'm going to hate that.

[wizall]

I'm doing that now, Cobra.  Not Banjo, but the new CoD game.  It really makes me wish I had that 120gig HDD. 

What do you think of the NXE so far?  I think it's rather slick, actually, even if it is just a more thorough means of delivering some bullshit content.  One feature I will certainly make use of is the Netflix streaming capabilities.  I have a rather massive queue but watching films on my shitty little laptop didn't make a lot of sense.  It looks and works great on my TV, though.

[scottws]

I'd definitely use the Netflix thing except don't you need a Live Gold account?

[wizall]

Yeah, I think so.  It's one of the first things they mention in the "Welcome" screens.

[beo]

yeah, loving this installing games business. i don't exactly take care of my disks, so this should make them last a bit longer. the new interface is quite nice too.

[Cobra951]

One already came up that suffers when installed, Halo 3.  If there's a hard drive present, the game offloads some data to it, then it reads from both drives simultaneously.  Installing it takes away the dual reading, and it performs a lot worse.

I haven't played much with NXE yet.  I did the avatar thing, but I didn't spend too much time on that either.  I could do better.  I got quickly familiarized with the up-down, left-right organization.  It doesn't feel like an improvement yet.  It just feels like a different way to do the same things that already worked fine.  The presentation is more slick.  I like the popup windows now better than the big panel sliding in from one side before.  I think they look clearer too--better color choices?  It's too early to be sure about anything.

I've been mostly in the game today.  Loving the silky-quiet, quick performance from the hard drive.  This alone makes NXE worthwhile.  It was the DVD drive stopping altogether that really floored me.  That never happened before while there was a disc in it, even if I was on the dashboard, or playing some downloaded XBLA game.  It makes me less afraid to leave the system on while in the game.  It's on now, though I was eating a while ago and now I'm here.

[iPPi]

I'll need to grab this NXE.  Unfortunately, I've only got a 20GB HDD, which means game installations are pretty much out of the question -- I've only got like 10GB free at the moment. 

[beo]

yeah, i should of mentioned in my previous post, with games installed to HDD my xbox is now about 90% quieter. NXE is worth it for that alone.

[Cobra951]

My drive is also the 20-GB original, with a whopping 13 GB of user space out of the box.  I still recommend installing whatever one game you're focused on.  B-K N&B is 6.6 GB.  I got rid of a bunch of demos and videos to make room for it.  It is very much worth the effort.  (But not for Halo 3.  I imagine there are other games too with performance tweaks that depend on both the DVD and HDD being readable simultaneously.  Hopefully a list will be compiled by someone out there shortly.)

When I finally went back to the dashboard, the DVD started spinning again, at the usual low speed while not in the game.  That was a bit of a disappointment, though not unexpected.  They realized it's best for the thing to be inactive when not needed, so, why not extend that to everything else (in addition to running the disc game from the HDD install)?

[Cobra951]

Hehe!  I think I'm going to make a sig out of this picture.  I just learned today that I can create separate sections sporting matching tow bars, then bring them together.  It also allows a much-longer overall vehicle, since the trailer(s) can be added to vehicle's blueprint wherever they fit.  The flying marquis is the full allowable length, but only about 5 units wide.  It's shoved all the way to one side of my jet, and there's no room to spare.  There's a single wing underneath, and that's all it needs to follow all the plane's maneuvers.

The tow connections can be released with an assigned button.  The marquis on the runway as I fly by.

[Quemaqua]

Haha, that's awesome.  You really need to stop making me want to play this, because it sounds sandboxy and goofy and awesome.

[Cobra951]

Everything I try seems to work.  The physics are predictable enough, and the flexibility of the creation tool with all these parts I have now make the possibilities seem limitless.



Carousel.  It has 4 horizontal jets in the cylindrical base, facing at 90 degree angles from each other.  They're also off-center, which make the whole thing want to spin.  The wheels are similarly laid out to facilitate the spin.  Banjo sits on a long pole with a towbar attachment at the bottom and a balloon on top.  Tow attachments are electromagnetic, so keeping the shaft taut this way gives it next to zero friction on level ground.  Banjo won't spin at all, even though the rest of the thing is going about 15 RPM.  The foldable propellers (folded in the pic--2 nubs on top) make it possible to transport the whole contraption wherever I want.  You can see another 2 concentric rings of skid marks to the left of the image, where the carousel was before.  I took another picture of the gizmo with the shaft detached.  (Click the image in the link to download the full 720p-res image.)  I just pressed the detach button and flew out of the tube.

I'm going to try to make it look fancier without adding too much weight.  One thing that worked well was a stereo (jukebox) piece.  One of the tunes you can choose is perfect for a carousel.  I want to add some lights at least.

Tinkertoy + sandbox extraordinaire, really.  It does take a long while to be able to do this kind of stuff, both in terms of climbing the learning curve and progressing through enough of the game to get a decent parts collection.

[Pugnate]

Wow that looks really cute.