While other run-and-jump heroes eke out shallow kart-racing retirements, Banjo the bear and Kazooie the bird return from a long break with all their goofy humor intact and a surprising new bag of tricks. A strange dude called the Lord of Games plucks our heroes and series villain Gruntilda from Spiral Mountain, and drops them in Showdown Town, a hub world where they’ll compete for jigsaw-puzzle pieces in a variety of events. As you earn “jiggies” and deposit them in an enormous bank in the center of town, you’ll unlock doors to new worlds and plentiful challenges all over the city’s six districts.

Sounds like standard 3D-platformer fare, right? There’s a big difference: instead of hopping and bopping on foot, you spend most of your time in tricked-out vehicles you make yourself. For that, you have a library of over 100 parts, including grip wheels, grenade guns, spoilers, and even wings. Instead of mindlessly gathering pointless collectibles, you carry boxes back to the workshop to expand your design options. Once you use the intuitive design interface to customize a hot rod, you can race Gruntilda through the vibrant greens of Nutty Acres, slap together a transport helicopter to take out the trash in Banjoland, and increase passenger capacity in your one-of-a-kind taxi to save the workers toiling inside a game console. Some missions turn into frustrating ordeals a bit too easily, but most are light and entertaining for all ages.

Even between encounters, $40 buys you a pretty ridiculous amount of content to explore. This overstuffed world beckons you to gather currency to spend on speed, strength, and stamina upgrades for Banjo; to earn colored tokens for the Bingo mini-game by helping residents; or just to wander large worlds filled with wacky life and destructible scenery. Split-screen multiplayer becomes choppy when four players participate at once, and the many online events are hampered by a lack of basic options — like, say, being able to set the number of laps in a race — but it’s pretty satisfying to beat would-be competitors with your own unique constructions.

Unfortunately, the same build-your-own wrinkles that breathe new life into old platforming gimmicks also limit the appeal for the less mechanically inclined. If you couldn’t care less about crafting your own vehicles, you’ll grow tired of hunting down new parts simply to activate preset blueprints. On the other hand, if you see a universe of possibility in every pile of Legos, you’ll get a creative kick out of Nuts & Bolts.

On Xbox 360

+ Lots of vehicle classes; plenty of collectible parts for building.

+ Wide variety of challenges in large and vivid worlds.

- Building won't appeal to everyone; absent multiplayer options.

? Will kids get the <em>Dallas</em> and <em>Buck Rogers</em> parodies?

8.0