16.2 hours played
Written 1 day and 17 hours ago
This game is gorgeous looking; the cartoonish wonderland of simplicity and magic is maintained throughout the adventure. The more interesting part is the main maintenance of these themes are supported by many realized elements in the world around them. The game has characters that fit their perspective worlds perfectly, everything blends beautifully with a sense of purpose. Yooka, throughout the game, has a very straightforward and honest approach in conversation, you’ll find the character to be assertive, kind and willing to assist anyone in need. Which, I believe would hit placidly if not for the counterpart. Laylee is a fun-loving, selfish, asshole with a tendency to annoy and insult many characters including what we can assume is her best friend: Yooka. Laylee will regularly make it clear that she likes to look out for herself, and by extension, Yooka. She wanted to get the book back to sell it, so she’ll do anything to get the pagies in order to reach that goal. Combined with Yooka, it makes for a very interesting and satisfying back and forth between characters while also binding the unlikely duo in a ying-yang sort of way. They look fantastic in the way of character design; from Laylee’s overgrown nose and her cute little feet hanging at the back of Yooka’s head, there’s detail throughout them. Opposing them are two equally interestingly designed characters. Capital B is a fat, greedy, corporate bee who wants to write the world as he sees fit. He spends his time in the game trying to reach his domineering goal while belittling each of the heroes and his workers. Complete with a honeycomb cane and a very classic suit and tie (with his initials sewn in) and a series of sharp, broken teeth. A glace from his spiky, veiny and misshapen eyes gives you a strong sense of his presence and what he represents. Next up is Dr Quack, who seems to be more a subordinate enemy, being sent as the reporter of trivia and stats. He will take the opportunity to exercise power and pride while remaining in safety as much as possible. He is clearly self-centered and will remain careful, for the most part, he’s an opportunist. Quack is living in a repurposed gumball machine complete with a DIY medical head mirror and 3 wheels to power him around the level. They both open the game being surrounded by their army of corplets, who are essentially faceless drones doing exactly what they’re asked of. I guess you could say that Capital B and his oppressive goal in controlling the way things go represents Microsoft in their control of Rare when they bought them. And the corplets represent the incredibly brain-trusted normies who buy game after game of series’ that have been run into the ground simply because there’s nothing else for them to do and thusly defend their purchase against those who seek to criticize them. Or yknow, its not. Whatever.
Looking at the video reviews for this game, it’s safe to assume that most everybody bloody hated the voices for the most part. Yooka-Laylee being set in a magical land and of course being the spiritual successor to Banjo that it is, was going to choose to have this style of voice almost by necessity. Other games have performed this crap in the past and haven't received the same criticism. These voices are not only not annoying to listen to but really are well suited to the characters that have them to be honest. They can really add to the environment at hand as well as the world that’s been crafted. This childish wonderland, filled with whimsy and talking clouds really falls right in with this. Funnily enough one of the little more annoying voices to me was Capital B and his repeated lines. But I want to bring up that his voice is less annoying that Grunty’s voice in Banjo. So, when people criticize this, I’d like them to be more consistent and tell me that Banjo fucked it up too. As opposed to saying “Ah, people in the 90’s, they just didn’t hear things like we do now.” Basically, take both games, or leave both. With all that out of the way, let’s move on to something meatier.
How does Yooka-Laylee compare with controls? Everything is tight, very tight, the game is very consistent. Plenty of areas get demonized not because of unresponsive controls or lack of control, it simply is the challenge. Honestly, I think people have forgotten what it feels like to play many of the platformers of the age it’s referencing and how often you would feel like the game screwed you over with a certain jump or ledge when, in reality, you simply didn’t react fast enough. Obviously, that doesn’t ring true for every game, but I can confirm that mechanics do indeed function well. But seriously, you will encounter moments in which things are really hard to traverse. But this is on the player to perform and succeed; an intrinsic part to the platformer experience.
Each of the bosses in their worlds has pretty decent character design, have their own relevant theming as well as reasons for existing there. Combine that with the pacing and mechanics it makes for a decent break, as well as a battle to punctuate the world. But for last, we have Capital B, the crowdfunded corporate creep. This fucker has 8 phases, why does he have 8 phases? You’ll likely get multiple restarts in the entire fight since they don’t supply you with hp at any point, I think they wanted to crank up the difficulty here but they made an extremely drawn out and kind of just annoying boss, I mean even the camera is against you. Other than that, it isn’t exactly clear when you’re dealing damage to capital B, this kind of cartoon smoke appears from him, and I feel like flashing red is the way to go, I don’t know when he’s immune to attacks or not, look why the fuck so many phases just why?
So, Playtonic have completed the project they set out to do. They ran a highly respectable campaign to create a product that they figured many of us wanted, and though there were some bumps in the road, they pulled through and created a genuinely fun and whimsical game filled with a series of mechanics that we’re all very familiar with, combined with some new ones to experiment with. They gave us a new world to approach and absorb with immersive visuals and music to really take us back to a time where we could enjoy a world for what it was, as opposed to reaching a particular area or boss. The gameplay we valued from these games breaking down the puzzles in a logical matter and defeating the challenge within, and finding the items in places that we would hide them ourselves if we were a dev. With extra sequences put on top to seal the game off, and a simplistic childish story to help frame the entire thing. Yooka-Laylee is not exceptional, but it is an awesome entry into the platforming collectathon genre that earns its side-by-side position with the greats.
