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Banjo-Kazooie: Gruntys Revenge Review - GBA

She's back and twice as ugly as before, but with only one thing on her mind - revenge. With her henchman Klungo at her side, Gruntilda the witch has escaped her grave by allowing her spirit to go inside a new mechanical suit making her transform into Mecha-Gruntilda. But what twisted plot has she got this time? This time she plans to go back in time and erase all memories of her defeat at the hands of the famous team of bear and bird Okay, so the story may seem a little freaky let alone the fact it is actually set two months after their first outing but this may possibly be the last Banjo-Kazooie title to hit a Nintendo console since Rare was bought by Microsoft.

Gameplay

Grunty's Revenge has very similar objectives to that of the other Banjo-Kazooie games. What you must do is find Jiggies (jigsaw pieces) throughout different worlds by completing certain tasks, reaching certain points, or winning a competition. After finding enough Jiggies you can then access new worlds until you eventually face the final challenge of facing Gruntilda. However, while Jiggies are the more important ratio of your quest, there are many other items to collect. Probably the second most important item to collect are musical notes which enable you to learn new moves to defeat Gruntilda's forces providing you've collected enough. Remarkably, they were actually once used to open doors in Banjo-Kazooie but for some reason, throughout Banjo-Tooie and Grunty's Revenge, they were changed to the purpose above. Besides this, there are also Jinjos to rescue who are little multicoloured creatures that whistle when you're near them and once all five in each world are rescued, you'll be rewarded with a Jiggy. The last two items you'll find yourself collecting are Hollow Honeycombs which can be given to Honey B (a bee) in exchange for an extra life meter and Mumbo Totems which let Mumbo Jumbo turn you into an animal.

The level layout is nicely done with Rare giving them a sort of 3D effect with you viewing everything from a bird's eye view. The actual environments range from a farm to a snowy mountain and you'll find that each has the exact same hazards such as the icy cold water in Freezing Furnace to the dirty waters of Spiller's Harbour. While they may be shown as something different, they give the same message, which is to stay out of the water. But while each world has virtually the same hazards, there is some verity between the hazards including running out of air while in water and being weakened by poison gas. Also, as most games do, the types of enemies you encounter will change depending on the level's environment which gives the levels some more variety. Unfortunately, one thing that is missing from Grunty's Revenge is the different puzzles the last two outings had. There appears to only be a few simple puzzles which don't live up to ... (continued next page)