A massive showcase of how only one or two design decisions in a game can lead to it being a far less enjoyable experience than it ought to me, which is disappointing to me because this game was shaping up to be an absolute favourite to me early on. Banjo Kazooie has all the makings of an old school collectathon masterpiece, with decently sized open levels that have a lot of room to hide things cleverly and contribute to a strong sense of exploration and discovery, a good sense of level design that provides the player with a multitude of unique and engaging challenges, and a frankly insane amount of charm. Each stage feels distinct and interesting with its own cast of entertaining characters and distinctive aesthetics that make the game intrinsically rewarding with each new idea thrown towards the player. Basically everything about the game works remarkably and is thought through with great care and love, but the combination of clunky controls and the way player death is handled make for a thoroughly uneven experience that becomes difficult to want to actually play through past a certain point.
The fact that dying in a level resets the notes you've collected feels genuinely insane to me and I have not been able to wrap my head around a possible reason why the game is like this beyond the attempt to make a more difficult experience. On the first few levels this is an inconvenient but ultimately reasonable design decision to make, with these being rather easy to get through without any serious threats, but as the game progressively gets more difficult, things become strangely stressful as you are put into more situations that will potentially make you recover over 20 minutes of progress to get those notes back. Mind you I'm not against this game having some difficult sections, I think it's important to have more threatening elements mixed in through the game to not only give variety to things but also to make the game feel less like a completely straightforward trek with nothing to keep the player on their toes. What I am against however, if the fact that the punishment is not only as harsh as it is, but also feels antithetical to the intended experience.
The desire to explore and discover everything a level has to offer gets offset by the fact that if the game decides to throw something nasty at the player, they've just lost a sizeable chunk of time. As such the drive to discover everything that an area has to offer gets weakened by this constant threat. It's also strange to me that the game does this while also having a lives system which ends up feeling rather pointless, since the additional loss of having to walk back to the level from the overworld is a relatively minor inconvenience for the player compared to having to recollect a central object every time they die or exit a level. If this harsh punishment for death was only applied to when the player lost all of their lives, it not only would increase the perceived value of the extra lives scattered all over the place, but it would stop the main experience from becoming thoroughly frustrating and demoralising once the later, more difficult levels are reached.
This is further exacerbated by the fact that the controls for the game are rather imprecise, which once again, wouldn't be such a frustrating thing if not for the fact that if these imprecisions lead to death, which they likely will at least once, it's just cost the player a chunk of time and makes the game feel repetitive as the player is essentially having to replay the majority of the level to get what they've lost again. In a worse game I'd find this to be far less disappointing, but for it to be an issue that pervades a game that I consider a borderline masterpiece otherwise, it comes as such an egregious issue that stopped me from wanting to beat the game after I died for the 2nd time after having nearly finished an area, forcing me to essentially do the exact same thing again for a couple of small slip ups.
Banjo Kazooie in a lot of regards is a fantastic game, with its variety, creativity and amazing sense of design in a lot of respects, especially in regards to a difficulty curve, but the way deaths are handled in this combined with some elements of classic N64 imprecision, I could not bring myself to beat this for the time being. I'll play the Xbox version of this next time to see if the game ends up being more fun if I experience things without what's essentially been my biggest complaint, but this game got to me bad enough that it'll take a bit of time to get around to that.
The fact that dying in a level resets the notes you've collected feels genuinely insane to me and I have not been able to wrap my head around a possible reason why the game is like this beyond the attempt to make a more difficult experience. On the first few levels this is an inconvenient but ultimately reasonable design decision to make, with these being rather easy to get through without any serious threats, but as the game progressively gets more difficult, things become strangely stressful as you are put into more situations that will potentially make you recover over 20 minutes of progress to get those notes back. Mind you I'm not against this game having some difficult sections, I think it's important to have more threatening elements mixed in through the game to not only give variety to things but also to make the game feel less like a completely straightforward trek with nothing to keep the player on their toes. What I am against however, if the fact that the punishment is not only as harsh as it is, but also feels antithetical to the intended experience.
The desire to explore and discover everything a level has to offer gets offset by the fact that if the game decides to throw something nasty at the player, they've just lost a sizeable chunk of time. As such the drive to discover everything that an area has to offer gets weakened by this constant threat. It's also strange to me that the game does this while also having a lives system which ends up feeling rather pointless, since the additional loss of having to walk back to the level from the overworld is a relatively minor inconvenience for the player compared to having to recollect a central object every time they die or exit a level. If this harsh punishment for death was only applied to when the player lost all of their lives, it not only would increase the perceived value of the extra lives scattered all over the place, but it would stop the main experience from becoming thoroughly frustrating and demoralising once the later, more difficult levels are reached.
This is further exacerbated by the fact that the controls for the game are rather imprecise, which once again, wouldn't be such a frustrating thing if not for the fact that if these imprecisions lead to death, which they likely will at least once, it's just cost the player a chunk of time and makes the game feel repetitive as the player is essentially having to replay the majority of the level to get what they've lost again. In a worse game I'd find this to be far less disappointing, but for it to be an issue that pervades a game that I consider a borderline masterpiece otherwise, it comes as such an egregious issue that stopped me from wanting to beat the game after I died for the 2nd time after having nearly finished an area, forcing me to essentially do the exact same thing again for a couple of small slip ups.
Banjo Kazooie in a lot of regards is a fantastic game, with its variety, creativity and amazing sense of design in a lot of respects, especially in regards to a difficulty curve, but the way deaths are handled in this combined with some elements of classic N64 imprecision, I could not bring myself to beat this for the time being. I'll play the Xbox version of this next time to see if the game ends up being more fun if I experience things without what's essentially been my biggest complaint, but this game got to me bad enough that it'll take a bit of time to get around to that.
theia
7 months ago