If you pony up five bucks to download the L.O.G.'s Lost Challenges add-on for Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts you'll see a new doorway just off the main town square (pictured). Go in there and you'll find yourself on the test track. Which is nothing new. However, if you look around, you'll discover 12 new L.O.G.'s challenges set on the test track.

If you're not familiar with Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts, I should point out that the L.O.G.'s challenges are the worst part of the game because you have to use predetermined vehicles to beat them. In other challenges, you can build your own vehicles, often subverting the challenge rather than beating it. The beauty of Nuts & Bolts is that it lets you break it! But no such thing is possible with L.O.G.'s challenges, which you have to beat by rote memorization, blind luck, and unwavering obsessive persistence. In other words, fair and square. Now you have 12 more to contend with.

I just failed three of them a few times before deciding that I still have far too many things left to do in this game that I actually like doing. If you complete the 12 challenges, you apparently unlock another one of those 8-bit 2D scrolling games the lizard lets you play to earn money. Speaking of which, I take back what I said before about L.O.G.'s challenges being the worst part of the game. That honor goes to the intentionally bad 2D scrolling games, which I beat my head against for far too long before writing them off as a joke. I'm sure there's some awesome unlockable at the end, but I'll never find out first-hand.

You also get three new multiplayer sports and four new multiplayer races, each set in existing levels. Yes, Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts has multiplayer. That's easy to forget or overlook what with all that's going on in the game.

Hmm, I'm wondering if this is the most useless 400 Microsoft points I've spent since buying an evening gown and heels for the last Tomb Raider game...

For the true Banjo-Kazooie devotees, there's this little bonus:

L.O.G.'s Lost Challenges will include the blueprints from seven lucky Xbox fans from the United States, Canada and Japan whose winning creations were selected by RARE from the recent "Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts" fan vehicle design contest. The winning contraptions can be unlocked by Banjo fans upon completion of the Stop 'N' Swop feature within "Banjo-Tooie" on Xbox LIVE Arcade later this spring. These incredible machines ranging from a beetle to a carousel and a robot prove that "Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts" is a game where the only limits to your adventure is your imagination.

Hey, no fair! I'd like to see those too, you know. But I'm not about to buy and play through some wretched Banjo-Kazooie platformer just to have a look at them. If there's one thing the superlative Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts could use, it's a more open exchange of player-made blueprints. I'm imagining something like the creature browser in Spore. Oh, and fewer L.O.G.'s challenges, please.