Review: Yooka-Laylee

This was such a solid plan on pagie paper. Locate a bunch of ex-Rare employees and get the band back together. Make a Banjo-Kazooie sequel not called Banjo-Threeie. Profit. Playtonic, the custodians of Yooka-Laylee aren’t personnel from the black hole of talent that modern-day Rare has become, either. They’re heydayers who weaved the DNA of one of gaming’s greatest studios. Problem though: when they resurrected the good old times, they brought the bad back, too.

Take the iffy cameraman, for example, that old platforming chestnut. In its current form, there were isolated moments so frustrating, Yooka-Laylee made us swear at the TV (in front of our kids, no less, which is something we never do). The free-form hubs and levels all let you off the leash to do whatever you want, whenever you want to do it, but every once in a while the view yanks you into submission and causes you to miscalculate and die.

One critical fundamental that does get nailed, however, is mascot design. The two leads – Yooka the chameleon, and Laylee the bat-shit crazy… er, bat – are brilliant. They’re oozing with character, whether it’s dancing a celebratory jig, or pun-roasting the many NPCs with fourth-wall-breaking-quips. Like Banjo, that trash is dispensed via text boxes and hilarious squeaking sound effects. We dug it, but a lot of the humour escaped our semi-literate young’s.

Playtonic gets the dynamic duo’s movement spot-on, too. Your moveset expands as you swap all of the quills you collect with a dodgy shopkeeper named Trowzer Snake. (Yes, that’s a schlong euphemism in a kids game, what of it?) Some of our early favourites include a tag-team bowling-style run and the ability to spit elemental ammo at things.

Later, Yooka earns limited invisibility to avoid detection and refract light beams, and Laylee gets sonar blasts and a protective shield. Having responsive heroes makes exploration fun in what is, aside from one obvious camera fly-over per level, a pretty unforgiving and guide-less game.

The old-school 1998 mentality of no objective markers and no map will irritate some. We didn’t find it too much of a problem. Otherwise, there’s a pleasing gameplay loop: rampant kleptomania earns moves to let you scale to greater heights and move with more speed and efficiency in the various challenges that cough up pagies. It’s easy to get lost in this simple pursuit, and it sure as heck in your interests to pay attention as you collect every single one of the 145 pagies and 1,010 quills. One of the inept bad guys insists on testing your in-game knowledge via a bunch of lethal quiz show moments.

Speaking of asking the hard questions: is Yooka-Laylee the game for you? If you grew up playing the Banjo Kazooie series, this is a no-brainer purchase. Playtonic has delivered the most faithful spiritual successor you could have ever hoped for. Mind you, it’s a warts-and-all trip down memory lane.
Unfortunately, this presents a bit of a game mechanic minefield for players who are either trying the genre for the first time, or are veterans used to being pampered by modern gaming conventions. Personally, we’re fans from the very first camp.

The nostalgia is strong with us, and at the time of writing we’ve seen that Playtonic is proactive with its patch roll-outs. So we see no reason why you shouldn’t double-jump in at a budget price.

7/10

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