BenjaminBirdie said:
I think I'm just going to put off meals for the next two days and buy the game today just so I have someone to talk about the game with without talking about codes.
The someone being me.
I'm unbanned just in time to heed the BenjaminBirdieBatsignal. Warning, some mild spoilers follow..
The game starts out with a hilarious intro movie on Spiral Mountain. You see what Banjo has been doing for the last 10 years -- eating pizza, playing 360 and N64 and getting fat. You get to control superfat Banjo for a while and it's actually laugh out loud funny.
After that you pick up where the demo started, with the tutorials in Showdown Town. Your first world unlocked isn't Banjoland, though. That's world #3.
For the people who didn't like the imprecise vehicle handling, once you beat the three stages of the first world, you unlock super grip tires. Ah ha! Not only do your vehicles handle better, you can finally drive up those green ramps. But you can also add spoilers to your vehicles to help handling. At least, I think that's what the spoilers do. Or you can just build a better vehicle for better handling -- I built a 3-wheel chopper that handles great (and is nice and fast with two medium sized motors underneath
).
Taking screen shots or videos of your game couldn't be easier. Pause the game where ever you are and move around a semi-free roam camera until you like your shot. Press A, save it to your HD, then upload it to the BK website if you want. I say "semi free roam" because you can move the camera around freely, but only within a certain distance of where Banjo's standing.
I uploaded a few pics already but that portion of the BK website isn't open yet.
The humor is fantastic and so are the graphics. The vehicle building takes a little familiarity before it becomes fun, but it really is quite fun once you stockpile good parts and get a good understanding of how to build nice vehicles. The level design is the most clever I've seen since Psychonauts (I couldn't stop smirking during the Log 720 level). The one negative so far after about 6 hours is the challenges are meh. Race this, move that, knock this off of that, find this... they should have mixed in those challenges with some more traditional game levels. Maybe there are some of those later, I don't know.
I'm quite happy with the game. I see myself getting 50-100 hours out of it just from screwing with the vehicle creator and finding the ridiculous amount of musical notes and secret areas.
