*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.
