While playing Banjo-Kazooie I couldn't help notice the comparisons. Not to Super Mario 64, but to Donkey Kong Country. If you think about it, Donkey Kong Country was a Super Mario Bros clone, but in a "bigger and better" sort of way. Instead of Mario, there's an animal. Instead of one guy, there's two who work cooperatively. Donkey Kong Country was bigger and better looking, ditto for Banjo-Kazooie. And both opened to glowing critics and consumers. Rare may not be original, but at least they know exactly how to clone something.

Anyways, Banjo-Kazooie bears (no pun intended) a remarkable resemblance to Super Mario 64. Practically everything in Super Mario 64 has a counterpart in Banjo-Kazooie. Let's take a look at these, shall we?

And so on and so on. But just because Banjo-Kazooie lacks innovation, it doesn't mean it's not good. Banjo succeeds in taking Mario's basic idea and running with it. It's better than every one of those clones that came out in the past two years or so.

The reasons those games failed were not in short supply, but the main reason was the level design was horrible. The most important element to a 3D platformer is level design. You can have the most interesting lead character but without interesting worlds for them to runabout in, things get boring fast. To be honest, Rare's nine stages don't have very original themes. There's a desert stage, an ice stage, a sewer stage, a beach stage, a grassland stage, a haunted house stage, etc. And heck some have very similar layouts as well (Clanker's Cavern = Dire Dire Docks from Super Mario 64). But oh the imagination put into these levels! They are about three times bigger than Super Mario 64's stages and are much more interesting. You could spend hours just exploring and never get bored because there's just so many sites to see. Nothing seems out of place, and some stages have little things that add to the excitement (for example if you jump into the water in Treasure Trove Cove a shark chases after you). The imagination Banjo-Kazooie has is on par with Parappa the Rapper. In delivering these lands, Rare also treats us to hands down the prettiest graphics yet on the Nintendo 64 and surprisingly some nicely done music. But, as with all 3D Platformers, the camera can be in some really annoying places at precisely the wrong time.

Instead of picking a mission to do then doing it as in Super Mario 64, Banjo-Kazooie just puts you in the stages and lets you find them on your own. So you can get more than one jiggy at a time. Getting them is fun and the missions are quite original. They range from getting to the jiggy from a point in a certain amount of time to a memory game. The difficulty in getting them is about on par with Super Mario 64.

From the story of the game, to the graphics everything is pretty cutesy. Not in a sickening way like Yoshi's Story (how many times can one take them singing the Yoshi's song?), but in a nice storybook sort of way. Thankfully, the storybook is a good storybook.

Overall: 9.0