Yooka-Laylee

*As full disclosure, I contributed to the game's Kickstarter campaign* Growing up with games like Mario 64 and the Banjo-Kazooie games (minus Nuts and Bolts) I was all to happy and willing to return to the classic collect-a-thon games of old, especially a indy game created by the many talents who departed from Rare who made the Banjo games a reality. Yooka-Laylee is that upfront, a collect-a-thon revival (or Rarevival as they put it) and if those weren't your kind of games back then this certainly won't be but does it catch what made the old games like Banjo great? Yes and no.

First the pros: I'm all for cheesy and fourth-wall-breaking humor and Yooka-Laylee is packed full of it especially the little double entendres that were littered in Banjo which lead to the the rompus Conker's Bad Fur Day. Laylee is basically this game's Kazooie, full of snark and snide remarks while Yooka serves the Banjo role being the reasonable one. The cartoon atmosphere and characters are a little more fleshed out even for a game that isn't primarily focused on the story adding to a nice touch.

Though the game features fewer worlds than the games that came before it, (understanding for an indy project) the smaller scale of the game is mostly made up for by the expansiveness of the worlds you can achieve by collecting more Pagies to unlock more of the world and a small cast of colorful characters to come across.

The music is splendid returning many former veteran composers of Rare making a wonderfully catchy and eclectic soundtrack. The game really hearkens back to the sound-voices as a sub for speech bringing back the old Banjo charm, though this may wear thin on some, you can always adjust the sound settings in the menu.

But now the cons, control wise, the game is mostly fine but it seems in 20 years we still have not managed to fix the bane of all 3D platforms, the camera. The camera is especially bad for specific mini games and boss battles where sight and depth are the key to winning or simply surviving. With hoop games so frequent, loosing your bearings while trying to find the next hoop to literally jump through can eat up precious seconds needed to win the game and in the case of the first world boss battle dodging obstacles is next to impossible. Flight controls suffer both in control and camera whether by design or negligence and trying to do anything but move from point-a-to-point B is terrible when it comes to flight.

Though I did say the game isn't light on content it still suffers padding issues with poorly conceived and strikingly difficult arcade style mini games and a cheap luck driven quiz game. Time limits can be arbitrarily tight and unforgiving at times. It's understandable some play games for tough challenges but I more play for entertainment and fun and challenge can be fun when it feels balanced and fair.

Yooka-Laylee is a game I didn't pay a great amount into so I can say I got my money worth. Issues I mentioned I hope can be worked out if more games in this or similar franchises can be worked out.

Yooka-Laylee has given Playtonic a start of producing games, but has ended up as a mixed bag. On one hand, it can feel like a Banjo-Kazooie clone. I won't say it's a ripoff. I can see the game's effort on telling a good story. But it can have the same storyline of Banjo-Kazooie where Yooka and Laylee's book was stolen but has to face a platform adventure to get it back. Same goes to some of the gameplay. Most of the quests we would do can be challenging, even when we get to the final boss. We don't get a lot of character development. And the game can be buggy. But on the other hand, it can be fun with some fun bosses (minus Capital B), minigames and ring races. The graphics can do well with the style of Rare. And the game would offer some unique moves both Yooka and Laylee can use. I cannot say it's a type of game you must play, but I know there will be people that are like me and are true fans of Banjo-Kazooie and want to play the game that's like it. But for me, I like that game better than this one. I can't technically say it's a bad game since Playtonic does have long ways to go. Because this is just their beginning of producing games. What I must do is play its second game, but that's for another time.

This nostalgia trip manages to look the part, but once you scratch beneath the surface there is very little to stay for beyond the initial appeal.

Design and programming take a backseat in favor of art direction, and since the game is riddled with countless bugs and absolutely bizarre counter-intuitive puzzles, it makes it especially hard to appreciate it. This game isn't a successor to Banjo-Kazooie, it's simply a cheap imitation that can't hold a candle to its predecessor.

For example, there are blocks of ice in the game which all look like ice, but inexplicably function differently from each other. One block of ice will require you to melt it with fire whereas another seemingly identical block of ice will instead require the sonic blast ability, whilst a fire plant has been placed within feasible distance of said ice block.

If the game itself seemed broken, wait til you play the minigames - they're exponentially worse. All minigames seem to have an awful amount of input lag to them, floaty controls, and disproportionately high skill requirements in comparison to the rest of the game. And they get worse and worse as the game goes on, to the point where when I got to Capital Cashino, I found the character would lock up if you input more than one command every half-second, roughly. This is obviously problematic in a game that requires precise movements.

The game is dull in general. The regular quests are at least responsive for the most part, but they are incredibly repetitive, often rehashed from level to level. The levels in Banjo-Kazooie started small and got more grand and epic as the game went on, however Yooka-Laylee suffers diminishing returns from level to level, despite having a mere 5 levels as compared to Banjo's 9.

The music from Grant Kirkhope is excellent as always and helps bring charm into the otherwise lifeless environments of Yooka-Laylee. They are one of the few elements that may have even improved at this point, and the dynamic transitions between variations of the world themes is flawlessly executed.

Boss fights are needlessly frustrating given poor camera angles and janky mechanics which make it feel more so you're fighting against the game itself and that your success is due to RNG rather than skill.

Don't buy this game. I heard Snake Pass is a cool game, and it's much cheaper.