Banjo-Kazooie

Most of the games I've played on the backlog are completely new to me- I may know a detail or two about the gameplay and stuff like that but for the most part I like to think I go into these games with a blank slate, keeping me from insane nostalgia-driven conclusions like 'Crash Team Racing is the greatest racing game of all time'. Banjo-Kazooie is a bit of a rarity, because while I never played it, I did witness almost this entire game getting beat. You see, when I was a youngster I lived about as far north in Westford as you could get, just barely reaching Tyngsboro. And for the most part everything in Westford north of route 40 was a dead zone- horrible winding roads, a very backwoods feel, and not many friends close by. Seriously, I really only had one kid in my grade on my street, and he was a long walk in the woods away. Anyway this friend and I were split on the Playstation/N64 debate, and we each ended up getting our system of choice on Christmas. While he would come over and play Jet Moto and WWF Attitude on my Playstation, I'd head to his house and man the player's guide while he played his way through some of the N64's greatest single-player campaigns- Ocarina of Time, Mario 64, and this game, Banjo Kazooie. You may think this sounds boring for me, but as I said, there wasn't much for me to do in my neck of the woods. So I would read the guides and try to figure out puzzles while my friend manned the controller and actually played the game. This gave me nearly the full experience of the game aside from its controls, and now that I have played Banjo-Kazooie myself it feels like returning to an old friend after so many years. It's a platformer not far off from the Mario vein. You play as Banjo the bear as well as his friend Kazooie the bird, who to my surprise is a girl. Banjo's little sister Tootie has been kidnapped by the evil witch Gruntilda, and is set up in some sort of contraption that will echange Tootie's youth and good looks for Gruntilda's old hag status. Banjo needs to enter Gruntilda's lair- basically a large level of its own- to enter into nine different levels and aqcuire puzzle pieces, musical notes, and other collectibles required to save his sister. Each level has its own theme and none are particularly surprising- the snow level, the desert level, the haunted house, et cetera- but they're still memorable and fun after all these years. The whole thing leads up to a final boss battle that is totally unique- your skills in platforming won't be tested, but... eh you'll see when you play it. Anyway I was playing this game with an eye towards 100% completion- for the most part this wasn't too hard, but when I got to the final level Click Clock Wood I just completely ran out of steam. My fault, or the game's fault? Probably mine. Although I should point out that Click Clock Wood was the only level in the whole game that I didn't recognize at all from my previous experiences with Banjo Kazooie. It would be easy to return to this some day and replace that gray 'B' with a gold 'C' on my backloggery, but I just don't see that happening.