Limited By Nothing

About an hour ago or so, several screenshots of the upcoming Xbox 360 game Banjo-Kazooie 3 have leaked all over the internet. I have gotten the word on these screenshots from a message board I frequent on a daily hourly basis. Here are the goods:

Honestly, I’m not quite sure what to think of the screenshots. The game have taken up a completely different art-style from the Nintendo 64 counterparts. Instead of the cute cuddly art-style, we now have steampunk. Hopefully this at least means that the game will be more targeted towards teens rather than children.

I’m usually very good at predicting how a game will turn out based from m a few screenshots. For example, I personally was able to guess that Mario Kart Wii would get a 84 average on Metacritic one week after its release and what the negatives about the game would most likely be. Needless to say, I was spot-on. Not only did I get the score exactly right, I also hit some of the negatives on the head. We could say that I can see into the future. Or that I have turned very cynical about the games that are being released as of today.

I’m predicting that Banjo-Kazooie 3 is going to get an average of 82 points on Metacritic, with 71 being the lowest and 92 being the highest. You heard it here first. “What are your reasonings?”, you might ask. Well for one, Rareware’s track record. They haven’t produced anything of high-quality ever since they have left Nintendo. Grabbed by the Ghoulies? No comment. Perfect Dark: Zero? Outdated gameplay wise. Viva Pinata: Party Animals? Horrible, horrible Mario Party 8 carbon copy (Notice how I didn’t say Mario Party 2).

Second, the game seems to lean more towards Ratchet & Clank than Mario Galaxy. Not to say that Ratchet & Clank is a bad game, in fact it’s amazing, but I just don’t think it will work. However, I don’t want to be too judgmental, so who knows. I will be able to form more opinions once the gameplay video is released, which should happen later this week. On another note, according to rumors, Banjo-Kazooie 3 will be the first game to utilize Xbox’s new Wiimote rip-off motion-sensing controller, the “Netwon”. You can read up on this interesting rumor on 8Bit Joystick.

What are your thoughts based on these screenshots?