Yooka-Laylee

Yooka Laylee is trying to be like the Nintendo 64 Classic Banjo Kazooie and in every way it achieved that goal. For the good and the bad. Where it succeeds is in the presentation and gameplay. From the start of the game to the end it looks sounds and play like a dream. The visuals, sound, and music are the biggest standouts and are fantastic. Gameplay is exactly what you might think it could be and the same with the controls. There are some improvements to the classic formula like a proper free moving camera and the removal of live, which makes the game easier to play than its predecessors. However there are some glaring flaws, which were present even in the older games. The Story itself is easily forgettable and there is no real goal or direction in each stage making it difficult to know where to go or what to look for when you start a stage. A problem which was fixed in games like Spyro 2, & Sly Cooper. The dialog is forgettable however their voices are not, since they are annoying and repetitive, which was also fixed in Conkers Bad Furday. And when the Camera control is taken away from the player it is sometimes position poorly. Many of my complaints are present in Banjo Kazooie and do not affect the way the game plays or feels since it is only a small portion of the overall experience. If you liked classic Rare Games like Banjo Kazooie you will love this game. It is pitch perfect and follows its every step, even into some mud. But despite that its still extreamily fun and enjoyable.

Note: I played the game with a 360 controller and I've 100% the game in 25 hours Yooka-Laylee feels like a worthy successor, the controls feel good, the graphics are very appealing, the worlds are very well designed, detailed and the music is top notch! The game truly feels exactly like Banjo-Kazooie, and with exactly I mean really mean -exactly-. As you may or may not know, the game has received a lot of mixed reviews and opinions from different directions with the main problem on the negative side being the following points: - The worlds feel "Empty" or "Flat" - The camera is bad - Many framedrops The camera has been fixed for the most part along with framerate improvements in a day 1 patch, I have personally experienced no issues with the camera with the exception of just a few spots where the game forces a fixed camera, but I trust that the developers will continue to work on improving the camera with coming patches. I am also not experiencing many framerate drops either, while the game does not run a steady 60fps at all times there are only very few tiny framedrops here and there which do not hinder my experience with the game, and that is with my 6 year old system! (I'll mention my PC specs below) As for why people are saying that the worlds feel "empty", I believe the main reason being that the game does not have consumable items on the ground such as the red feathers, golden feathers and eggs in Banjo-Kazooie making a bunch of places seem empty. Yooka-Laylee instead offers an energy bar that automatically replenishes within a short time but can also be refilled by collecting a butterfly that spawns all across the map in various spots. If you can look past that, the worlds of Yooka-Laylee offer a lot to do! There are 25 pagies(Jiggies), 200 quills(Notes), 1 health extender, 1 energy extender, 1 play coin, 1 mollycool(Mumbo skull), 5 Ghost Writers(Jinjo) and a super secret skull to find in each world. If you love Banjo-Kazooie, you'll love Yooka-Laylee!

The overall tone and feel to it is nice, but I DO feel it needs some additional polish to it. Texturing and overall graphical fidelity could use some touch ups, but beyond that, the options should be more in-depth. This game is not very friendly to keyboard users and does require a gamepad to play. In addition to these things, I also feel that the level layout is absolutely awful. Will you learn your way around levels? Yes. You're required to spend a lot of time in them trying to find pagies and other collectibles. You will eventually learn your way around them, but there's really nothing helping you out there. There will be a few landmarks you can pick out eventually, but nothing stands out to distinguish one area from another. Everything blends together in a muddled mess as you get lost and try to find your way back to that one area you were just in. Also, some of the dialogue is given out of order or was written with a certain idea in mind but wasn't double checked. It ends up making some lines awkward and not quite making sense. Those are my complaints, so let's talk about the good stuff now! You can activate various taunts with Yooka and Laylee with the D-Pad! That was cool! I didn't expect that, and it really made me feel like they had a good connection being able to do that. It's like having the taunts of Smash Bros put into this game, and I enjoyed it! The game controls well, albeit, the characters are a bit floaty. I've found that jumping a lot helps with traction, giving you more control of the sliding. I love hearing the grunts of Yooka and Laylee as they move about, and I definitely feel the connection between both of them as you adventure with them. It's very similar to Banjo and Kazooie. The gamefeel is really nice. I enjoy the movement, the controls, the platforming, and the characters. The game feels like a mesh of Banjo-Tooie and Banjo Kazooie. It's like they took the levels from Banjo Tooie and put them into the hub world of Banjo Kazooie.

This game is just really fun to play and getting better by the hour (5.5 hrs in, just began world 2). I would recommend it for most gamers. If you enjoyed SM64 or Banjo-Kazooie you should get this.

As a big fan of Banjo an Kazooie, I love this game and I am looking forward to Yooka Replaylee