Godawful article titles are nothing new to the gaming industry. Everybody’s a fucking comedian, when you get right down to it, and it’s always amateur night. So when the somehow non-defunct Blue’s News came up with the proto-zinger “Saw Game Axed” earlier today, it was immediately regurgitated by a few dozen websites to the point where the phrase brings up 68 hits in Google.

I could let this pass without feeling the need the need to point it out and say shame on you, Satan, but one of those sites was the bowl of mirth that is Atomic Gamer (link not included for your protection). Apparently Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts is still front page news here, and I’m always game to read a negative review. I shouldn’t have been surprised, but apparently Banjo’s combination of frictionless surfaces and vehicles with all the torque of a Taco Bell is a winner in the eyes of AG’s staff of paraplegics and cannibals, because it walked away with an 89%. I know what you’re saying, “Vance, 89% is what gaming sites give Microsoft games when they want to keep receiving promotional swag yet need to send an S.O.S. smoke signal to gamers to stay the fuck away.” I’d offer this explanation myself, except for three fine points within the article.

1) The author takes a passing swipe at Little Big Planet and Peter Moore, claiming that Banjo would get more attention if LBP weren’t so overhyped and that Moore’s assertation that Rare isn’t the juggernaut it once was is a foolish statement.

Well, Little Big Planet works, for starters. It lives up to the hype, and actually exceeded my expectations. Banjo failed to meet them, and that’s saying something concerning a game on a system whose controller I dread the use of.

Also, the usually insane Peter Moore had a moment of clarity and it was the wrong point to attack on the reviewer’s part. Rare cranks out very pretty games that have gigantic worlds with very little in them and make navigating between these fleeting points of interest a lot more challenging than the boss fights you’ll find there. Besides Viva Pinata, Rare has yet to create a decent post-N64 game in anything but the looks department. And ask any frat boy, all looks and no lap dance skill just don’t cut it.

2) The quality of the article speaks for itself (oh fuck it, here you go. A world of wonderment and excitement awaits you). Big blocks of text, check. Long, run-on sentences, check. Grammar of opening sentence implies Banjo and Kazooie are a single entity, check.

Big-ass second paragraph is repeated twice, check.

Okay, we’re not professionals. In fact, we’re a small group of janitors and fluffers pretending to be professionals, much like the staff of 1up.com. But we don’t do shit like that.

3) Double apology. Maybe this ain’t so major to you, but I find “Don’t get me wrong” to be one of the lowest forms of conversation. It’s a pussified way to make a point. Maybe I’ll let you get away with it once in a while, but if it shows up twice in a single conversation, you need to stop talking and get back to mopping the floor at McDonald’s.

So we took great delight in not only reading “Don’t get me wrong, LBP totally deserves the attention” after the sideswipe proclaiming that it’s stealing Banjo-Kazooie: Where’s the Beef?’s thunder, but also the ending megaparagraph’s “However, as a gamer who’s spent the last eight weeks blasting aliens, zombies, and insurgents (and believe me, I’m not complaining)”.

As a final word, Microsoft does NOT release good games for anything less than $60, and they have yet to drop the decidedly mediocre Halo 3’s price at all so far. Nuts & Bolts was released at $40. Do the math.

FUN FACT: Despite being a good-looking game, the lead characters of Nuts & Bolts look like utter ass.