Banjo Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts.
I love it, designing vehicles is extraordinarily varied, there's a ridiculous amount of parts and designs possible, in fact, I made a gigantic cube on wheels just because I god damn felt like it. Rare's sense of humor has returned full force, the game is hilarious and the typical self-referential stuff you expect from Rare is amplified due to the Lord of Games and his ridiculous commentary.
It's pretty much a fantastic sequel, but there is a problem. It's much less focused on exploration, the levels are typically easy to navigate, and serve only as levels designed purely for Jiggy challenges in the form of navigating your vehicle. There are some on foot things you need to do, but they're small and insignificant for the most part, you can tell Rare didn't really focus on exploration as much because all the Jiggy challenges are marked on your automap, as is the entire level itself (you never really wander around anymore). The levels don't take nearly as much time as Tooie's to traverse, and there's not so much to see either. There are still cool easter-eggs and junk hidden around, but it's not on the ridiculously awesome scale of Tooie.
I love Nuts & Bolts, but it's missing the trademark that made the original Banjo games great, their levels that always had great stuff hidden in little nooks and crannies that forced you to explore diligently, that's why I chose the series over the 3D Mario games in the first place, that and the personality of course, which is still present in full force.
I'm enjoy it immensely despite that. Even better is the fact that the originals are now available on Live Arcade, playing the Banjo games is a lot more pleasant with the awkwardness of the N64 controller gone.
