Ten years after the action/adventure game starring a bear named Banjo and his bird companion, Kazooie first hit Nintendo 64, it returns with a DIY update that will speak to the YouTube generation. Instead of just moving the cartoon twosome around a glorified obstacle course, the new BK lets you make your own vehicles and use them to battle the not so good witch Grunthilda and her minions for control of Spiral Mountain.

The details of the new Banjo-Kazooie center on creating your own rides. It's almost like virtual LEGOs. Click to see more screens from the game...

"We want players to use their imagination," says the game's lead developer about the new Banjo-Kazooie.

The vehicle creation system starts, to no surprise, in a garage. Create a car, helicopter, boat and other rides completely from scratch or add components to pre-made vehicles. There are at least 1,600 components to choose from, including engines, wheels, wings, fuel, propellers, weapons and body panels. Finish your masterpiece, paint it and then head back into the game to continue the journey.

Vehicles can be customized in game as well, and the developer showed off how easy it could be to turn a car from a four-wheeled road hugger to a helicopter (by adding spinning propellers that were sitting around in game) and then into a boat by adding floats to the bottom of the vehicle and moving the propellers from the top to the back of the car to drive it forward.

Vehicle creation will be a part of both the single-player story mode and the multiplayer mode. For those who don't want to create their own rides, the story mode will include pre-created vehicles in the environment that you hop into and complete missions. That won't be without consequence, however. A player's performance is scored from A to E grades after each section and the only way to get the top grade is to hone your skills in the game's garage.

In the multiplayer mode, create a ride, give it a run in a testing area and then go head-to-head with up to eight players in a series of games (complete number not yet announced). We created a big vehicle called a "Shover" and then used it to try to push other players off a raised platform.

Tinkering in the garage will suck up hours of time. We easily spent a good 45 minutes playing around with the tools to build a basic ride, using a pre-made car body and adding two engines, two gas tanks and a big set of wheels. The tools offer an impressive number of customization options but using them will require a short learning curve. Deleting an unwanted part from a creation requires too many button presses, but that was probably the biggest hiccup with the otherwise user-friendly in-game system.

We didn't learn much more about the game outside of the fact that Banjo competes against nemesis Grunhilda in a series of challenges, and the winner takes control of Spiral Mountain (Banjo wants to preserve it, Grunhilda wants to turn it into strip malls). We were mostly impressed with the game's stunning good looks and cheeky humor. The colorful, creative environments included real-world textures (e.g. a burlap texture on the ground) that look like they've been ripped directly from Sony's not-yet-released Little Big Planet. Everything from the funny dialogue to the names of towns and characters, (i.e. Grunthilda Winkybunion, Loggo the talking toilet) are over the top and delivered with a wink and a nod. This is one Xbox 360 exclusive to keep an eye on before it hits stores in November.