I’ve been trying for pretty much the entire year to write something about video games but I have had a difficult time coming up with a topic that I am interested enough in to write about. I love video games but often times I can’t accurately put my love of them into words. Now don’t get me wrong I could talk for days about my favourite games like the Uncharted, NBA 2K and inFamous franchises but I decided that I should try something new and so here I am, writing a review for a video game for the first time. I chose to review Yooka-Laylee for reasons that I will get into as well as the fact that I’ve been a fan of 3D platformers for a long time but was hesitant to pick this game up due to it’s critical reception. I might as well get started with the review so here we go.
When numerous former Rare employees announced that they had started a new studio named Playtonic Games and that their first game would be funded via Kickstarter and that it would be a spiritual successor to their beloved Banjo-Kazooie franchise a lot of people jumped for joy as Rare, a company that was once considered to be the best in the world had been relegated to making mediocre Kinect games for Microsoft. I took a different approach to this announcement, as I am someone who has barely any knowledge of Banjo Kazooie outside of knowing that Nuts & Bolts is one of the best games for the Xbox 360. I was never a Nintendo 64 person and have never owned an Xbox so this series has eluded me aside from the time I rented Banjo-Pilot for the Game Boy Advance from my local Rogers Video. I’m a fan of 3D platformers such as Spyro the Dragon, Jak and Daxter, Crash Bandicoot and of course Super Mario(except for Super Mario Sunshine, which is a bad video game) so I was definitely interested in Yooka-Laylee. Despite not knowing anything about the series other than two of the best composers in the industry were writing music for the game I still knew that I would likely play the game when it released years after it blew past it’s Kickstarter goals. When the game released earlier in 2017 I was surprised by the divisive nature of the game, ranging from Jim Sterling calling the game rubbish to Bob Mackey of Fandom saying that it reinvigorates the once thought to be dead genre. After reading reviews I decided to pass on the game because I wasn’t in the mood for what many considered to be a completely average game; but then something changed.
At some point in mid April I started to go through one of those phases where I question my usefulness to this world, it’s something that I’m sure happens to everybody but for me I can end up feeling completely terrible about everything going on in my life, or lack thereof. I spent over a week where I didn’t want to touch a video game controller and was only really finding enjoyment in Giant Bomb. In the past a playthrough of the Uncharted games has been something to get my mind in a better place but I couldn’t bring myself to revisit my favourite games so I decided to try something different when I noticed the colourful world of Yooka-Laylee being advertised on the PlayStation Store, hesititantly I purchased the game at one of the strangest prices I’ve ever seen for a game ($53.49 CAD). And that’s where my adventure begins in the wild world of Yooka-Laylee.
Yooka-Laylee immediately evokes the feeling of late 1990’s to early 2000’s video game by having a long developer intro leading into the title screen. The story of the game isn’t all that important and boils down to evil business bee Capital B attempting to steal books from all over the world, which interferes with the titular characters Yooka the lizard and Laylee the bat who set out on an adventure through five distinct worlds (presented in game as books scattered throughout Capital B’s factory/mansion). Throughout the game you collect numerous items including Pagies that help unlock new worlds, quills that you use to learn new gameplay abilities from a snake that wears pants as well as items that will extend your health and ability meter. Each world has a lot to do in it, which sometimes works to its detriment with one big example that I will get to later.
I’m sure everyone knows how this game plays because its core gameplay isn’t all that different from 1996’s Super Mario 64. You walk around each world looking for collectibles until you have enough quills to buy new abilities and enough Pagies to unlock the next world. One of the nice things about the game is that there is enough leeway so that you don’t need to do every single thing in each world before moving on and in some cases you can only get some collectibles after learning abilities found in later worlds. It’s a fun thing walking into a room in the first world (Triblestack Tropics) and seeing a security camera that closes the nearby door once you get close, knowing that you will be able to come back here later once you find a way to bypass security cameras (hint: it involves invisibility). Each world also offers a distinct transformation in the form of a helicopter, plant, pirate ship, snowplow and a group of fish, which you’ll use to unlock more collectibles. This part of the game is ultimately really fun and aside from a few control quirks I really enjoyed exploring the worlds and meeting the characters that inhabit the world. Each world also offers up a boss fight and its unfortunate that none of them are any good. Each one relies on a different gameplay element but mostly for the wrong reasons. In one of the worlds you must be a pirate ship dodging a variety of attacks until you get close enough to use your own weapons to attack its weakpoints. This sounds simple enough but the ship you are playing doesn’t control well enough to navigate narrow bullet-hell-like passages in a manner that feels fun.
Yooka-Laylee features several characters to interact with including the previously mentioned trouser snake, a minecart named Kartos, a cloud that you race, Capital B’s assistant who forces you into progress halting trivia sections as well as numerous other NPC’s who will offer you specific quests in each world. Snowmen want their hats in the ice world, talking plants will offer advice to you in the first world (although only when you transform into a moving plant after meeting an octopus scientist lady) and the casino world has slot machines who offer up challenges for currency. I note the currency because in the Casino world while you do collect Quills as well to learn new moves you also must earn tokens to spend on Pagies, which gets into one of my biggest issues with the game.
Captial Cashino is the fourth world in Yooka-Laylee and is absolutely terrible. The first three worlds each offer some different things and are all mostly good aside from a few areas such as the underwater cave in Glitterglaze Glacier. Capital Cashino forces you to walk around the world solving slot machine puzzles in order to obtain coins to buy Pagies instead of completing actual gameplay challenges to just earn the Pagies like in literally every other world. I could understand if each world tried something different like Capital Cashino does but when it is the lone world that tries something different and fails miserably at it, it really stands out. Either way Capital Cashino does offer some similarities to the other worlds by way of the minecart sections and the arcade minigames that occupy each world.
In each world Kartos will take you for a ride on his minecart course and offer up a Pagie if you can collect enough gems (because why not have another currency only tied to this one specific thing). These missions are surprising because of just how mediocre they are; the minecart levels in the Donkey Kong Country games are some of the best of all time so I was excited to revisit this type of gameplay only to be disappointed by how poorly they control. It’s one of those things where it feels like the engine wasn’t built for this type of gameplay and was just tacked on. They’re mostly harmless except for the one world where the boss fight is tied to a minecart section, and of course it’s the casino world. I hate having to say that there are more sections of this game that feel completely out of place and they mostly involve a talking dinosaur.
Throughout each world you will collect a single Play Coin that you can use at Rextro’s arcade. Who’s Rextro? He’s a virtual dinosaur who runs an arcade in each world that features a single minigame and unlike Kartos Rextro offers up two Pagies, one for completing his game and another for getting the high score on each game. I do find it strange that the owner has the high score since he would theoretically have access to the arcade hardware and would be able to cheat to get the high score and let me tell you, one of the games certainly feels like some sort of cheating went down in order for him to get the high score. Once again in Capital Cashino Rextro offers up an endless runner similar to Temple Run except that instead of running from a monster you are running from the dreaded bottom of the screen. It’s not hard to confuse this minigame for something that would show up on Steam Greenlight since that’s how bad it is. It doesn’t help that you can barely see what is going on in this casino themed minigame and that this is the one section of the game (at least on PS4) where the frame rate goes to shit. This is by far the worst part of the game and I can’t fathom why this or any of the minigames are in this game at all as all they do is break up what is ultimately a solid platformer. To me it’s a classic example of a developer wanting to pack content in to put on the theoretical back of the box in order to entice customers into buying; kind of like Assassin's Creed: Revelations which had tower defense segments that were completely pointless and didn’t help the game in any way.
I could highlight the music here but all I can really say is that it is decent David Wise/Grant Kirkhope. Music isn’t all that important to this game so I found myself putting on headphones and listening to podcasts while hunting for collectibles which I really felt helped especially since finding the last few quills in any particular world can be a bit annoying. In terms of visuals the game has some highs and some lows, for example the first world is very colourful with a lot of unique architecture scattered around while the third world (Moodymaze Marsh) is pretty groggy to look at and doesn’t look nearly as good as the first world.
The core gameplay of Yooka-Laylee is very solid and I did enjoy most of my time with it but by the time I reached the fifth world (Galleon Galaxy) I was burnt out. I quickly got enough Pagies, found the boss and got my ass out of there and onto Capital B’s office for the final boss. It’s a shame that there is so much of what I hate to call crap attached to this game because it would be much better if it did not exist. If you cut out the minecart and arcade games as well as the entire casino world you would instantly have a much better game; but that’s not the product that is being sold so it needs to be held accountable for this game’s quality. Yooka-Laylee isn’t a bad game, it isn’t a good game and unlike Triple H it isn’t The Game, it’s just a fun 3D platformer that tries too hard to be a massive game when it could have succeeded by being smaller. I enjoyed enough of my time with Yooka-Laylee and see myself going back to the game in the future to try and complete every task and find every collectible which I always consider a positive. This game was worth my $53 even if at times it didn’t make me holler.