In the beginning of Banjo-Kazooie Nuts & Bolts, you'll be on the ground messing around with cars for a while. But then you get propellers to make helicopters and wings to make airplanes. At which point, you'll get a new perspective on the game. Literally.

Read about the miracle of flight after the jump.

Some friends were talking about how great the graphics were in Banjo-Kazooie Nuts & Bolts. I'd only messed around in the first few levels, so I sort of shrugged and grunted something about how it's no Far Cry 2, which is what I say these days whenever someone mentions graphics.

But then one friend (who deserves significant credit for kindling my interest in this game; more on him later) mentioned giant clockwork gears that turn the fake clouds hanging in the sky. I had no idea what he was talking about. I'd seen giant gears, but it didn't occur to me to wonder what they were doing there. They're just gears. Big gears. Level designers love gears. They're a great way to fill empty space with the illusion of something that's supposed to be there. Gears and machinery. Pipes, too. Also control panels. It's all terribly important stuff. So important that I've long since stopped noticing them as anything other than filler.

But next time I went into Nutty Acres (yeah, that's what it's called), I took a closer look. Yep, the clouds are made from some sort of patchwork quilting and they're dangling from machinery in the dome of the world. In fact, a later airplane race will take you through that machinery up in the world's dome. A boat race will take you through the gears turning in the water.

But I didn't know any of this yet. And it wasn't until I got an airplane and flew over Nutty Acres that I really appreciated Rare's rare creativity. Nutty Acres has several different biomes, if you will. There's a swamp, a volcano, a coconut farm, and hills that you'll realize are mounds of coconuts stored under tarps. There are the surrounding seas with little islands, the airfield at the side of the volcano, the hilltop fort, and the road that winds through hills. There is a river and pipes for the lava and the patchwork clouds turned by enormous gears. Over successive acts, the volcano gets more and more cranky (in the fifth act out of six, the sky has changed color, an ominous pillar of smoke is rising from the volcano, and the air is filled with flecks of ash). At one point, the river dries out and you race through the riverbed. What I had originally thought was a boring vanilla level with a stupid name has actually undergone a little character development.

Although I'm only starting to explore the penultimate level (I'm afraid the actual last level is going to be a disappointment), it seems that Nutty Acres is probably the best level in Nuts & Bolts. There are some really nice twists in the other levels. The first battle against the witch in the coliseum is spectacular, the fake-out in the horrible horrible level inside an Xbox actually made me mad, and I presume Banjo's museum is stuffed with in-jokes that mean nothing to a Banjo hater like me. But none of them has as much personality and variety as Nutty Acres.

That said, one of Rare's neatest tricks is scattering around each level hidden challenges in the form of tiny little creatures called jinjos. Beating these challenges is part of the collection subgame in Nuts & Bolts, but the only way to find the jinjos is to explore the worlds, usually with an airplane or helicopter. And it's to Rare's credit that they have made these worlds worth exploring.

Tomorrow: dirty pool