Yooka-Laylee

It’s been a while since we got the last games in the Banjo-Kazooie platformer series from British developer team Rare, and ever since fans have been clamoring for the series’ return, which doesn’t seem possible at the moment. Most of the elements behind it left the original development team and these elements announced the creation and leadership of the Playtonic Games development team. Turning to the Kickstarter platform to seek support for the development of the spiritual sequel to this series, fans rushed to support the project, and the result is that we get the Yooka Laylee platformer that we are reviewing for you today.

Yooka-Laylee is a 3D platform game that is very reminiscent in presentation and idea of ​​the classic Banjo-Kazooie game series, where you play as two characters at the same time, namely the chameleon Yooka and the bat Laylee, each of them has its own skills to help you progress through the stages during development. The game uses the “Unity” development engine and can… This is one of the game’s biggest problems, as this engine has limited options to render the game well or generally work well. The game doesn’t look like a current generation game at all on a technical level and there are severe slowdowns in various places.

As for the game’s sound, David Wise, the famous composer of the former Rare development team who gave us the melodies for the Banjo-Kazooie series, is back to work on this game. Therefore, the melodies of this series are very similar, while the characters, as usual in the classic Rare Team games, sometimes make strange and annoying noises. Many, especially the sound “Lily” makes when she throws one of his punches. Overall, this game doesn’t offer much on a technical level.

We won’t talk much about the story of the game since it is a platform game. Here you face this evil rich man who wants to collect all the books in the world. While Yuka and Lily have just moved into their new house where they find a book that seems to be antique and it is stolen by this rich man and the journey begins to search for the book and with the collection. On your pages you will get the new stages and worlds that the game offers.

As with any platform game from the classic Rare team, you start with a limited set of skills and begin to develop them as you progress through levels, collecting the Knorr and speaking to a snake to teach you new moves that will help you in the game Advance through game worlds and face the enemies within them. In fact, at first glance you will begin to lose enthusiasm for the fact that this is the spiritual sequel to the Banjo-Kazooie series. I quickly discovered the game’s problems. The controls weren’t ideal, and I suffered greatly when jumping between platforms because there seemed to be a lag in responding to the controls. This is one of the shortcomings of “killer” platform games, especially because I love these types of games very much.

The second problem is that the camera in the game is often not ideal. Although you have full control over it, it changes automatically and sometimes you find that it moves on its own while you are trying to move it to another location. Another unpleasant aspect. In fact, I tried a lot to enjoy the game and not pay attention to the problems, but they repeat every time. Partly platform-oriented, it has become boring. It’s difficult to enjoy something that seems easy to do, but you’ll find yourself repeating it often because the controls and camera aren’t ideal for playing.

The game features a number of worlds to explore, and the level of these worlds varies greatly in terms of design and fun. I’ve noticed that the further I progress in the game, the less creativity and spirit there is in it, as if the development team designed the first few worlds and then brought ideas from other games for the rest of the worlds, and I had not much fun with it. There are a number of mini-games in the game for fans of group play and to give the game higher value for money, which is very good for the game in general.

Yooka-Laylee is the “average” spiritual sequel to the Banjo-Kazooie game series. The development engine was apparently not ideal for the production of this game, and some decisions made by the development team always give the impression that rushed work was the basis for the project. If you can overcome these shortcomings, you’ll have a pretty entertaining experience. But as someone who loves platform games, this game didn’t bring me much joy, but rather a lot of frustration.

This game was reviewed using a PS4 review copy provided by the publisher before the game was released.