Yooka-Laylee (PS4)
When the spiritual successor craze hit Kickstarter, one game that managed to draw a huge amount of attention was Yooka-Laylee. Created as a successor to the spectacular N64 collectathon Banjo-Kazooie and developed by many of the former Rare employees who worked on that game, things looked promising for the project and it far exceeded its funding goals. When the game was finally released though, people’s opinions were somewhat split. The game didn’t quite reach the heights of its inspiration, but many an enjoyable game can look less interesting when placed next to greatness. With the benefit of post-release patches and a long time for the dust to settle, perhaps now is a better time to really take a look at Yooka-Laylee on its own merits, even if its design is deliberately meant to evoke memories of Banjo-Kazooie.
Yooka and Laylee are the game’s title characters, the player taking on the role of a humanoid chameleon and his unlikely bat companion. Both bring different things to the table, Yooka being the friendlier one who can talk to other characters and get things done while Laylee’s snide wit adds a humorous edge to the conversations you have with a cast of quirky and unusual characters. Laylee can be downright rude with her insults and jokes at people’s expenses, but oddly enough few characters will choose to address her directly, making her more like the peanut gallery as the more subdued personality of Yooka handles the talking. The game does put a lot of emphasis on its humor, with running gags, meta jokes, and deliberately goofy character designs doing a pretty good job of making the game generally silly even when not all its jokes land. Characters will directly acknowledge the fact they’re in a video game by referring to the game’s five platforming worlds as things like World 3, identify the area’s boss as a world boss, and reference the state of the gaming industry compared to the simpler game designs of games like Banjo-Kazooie from nearly 20 years ago. Saying minecart gameplay is old fashioned feels like a joke that doesn’t match reality though, and there are some moments it tries to slip in “back in my day” style jokes to cover up its own issues like long collectible quests, but Yooka-Laylee’s tone generally makes engaging with the world and its characters stay light-hearted, offering at least a few laughs even for those not tickled by self-referential humor or Laylee’s putdowns.
The story kicks off as Yooka and Laylee are relaxing in their new home, a grounded ship that contained a peculiar treasure. While they can’t really find a use for the book with golden pages they found, it’s clearly important, a hunch made outright clear when we see the story from the perspective of the game’s villains. Capital B is the corpulent corporate insect in charge of Hivory Towers, and thanks to his assistant Dr. Quack, they develop a machine that will suck up all the books in the world in their search for the book Yooka and Laylee uncovered, for it has the power to rewrite the rules of reality. However, as that book is sucked in, its pages scatter all around Hivory Towers itself and the worlds contained within its five Grand Tomes. Unaware of its true power, Yooka and Laylee still chase after it, aiming to collect the pages while Capital B deploys his forces to stop their efforts. Quite a bit of the game, especially the Hivory Towers overworld, angles for jokes extending from the business slant the game’s main antagonist has, leading to many jokes at the expense of corporate jargon and, appropriately enough for the big bee, buzz words. Despite this though, when you dive into one of the Grand Tomes, you’ll find worlds completely disconnected from that angle, things like the icy world of Glitterglaze Glacier and the appropriately tropical Tribalstack Tropics feeling distinct and exploring their themes not often for humor, but for interesting collectathon challenges. One does manage to mix in the business angle well though, the most distinct world being Capital Cashino which is portrayed as a casino run by Capital B and his goons, but there they are bound by the rules of their gambling resort to give you what you earn fairly through their games.
Your goal in Yooka-Laylee is to explore the game’s five worlds and Hivory Towers in search of the Pagies, the golden pages sometimes found out in the open but usually kept in Cagies until you’ve found out what you need to do to free them. Yooka-Laylee’s Pagies usually require some sort of skillful action or puzzle-solving to acquire, the designs for these small goals managing to shift around a lot to keep the game’s tasks interesting as you delve deeper into the game. When you dive into a new world or are wandering around a familiar location, you aren’t really given much direction for your 3D platforming antics, meaning that its quite easy to stumble into a Pagie challenge while you are just exploring the interesting landmarks of a location. One of the most interesting parts of Yooka-Laylee is popping into a new world and just wandering off, letting your own urge to explore lead you to the different challenges on offer. One interesting trait of the game worlds is that most every part of the environment can be climbed on, so even if you see a tall barrier of stone in front of you that looks like its meant to keep you out of an area, proper skill with your jumping abilities can help you over it, sometimes even allowing you to figure out your own solutions to acquiring Pagies. This is an extension of the fact you get a flying ability late in the game though, meaning these areas would eventually open up regardless, but the freedom to go wherever your abilities can take you rather than being restricted makes the early exploration of a world feel more inviting and open.
Over the course of the game, Yooka and Laylee will gradually be able to expand their skillset by trading in the Quills scattered around the levels to Trowzer, a snake who wears a pair of pants by threading his body through the leg holes. Laylee will spend the whole game riding Yooka, but the skills the two unlock tap into the powers the two animal heroes have as well as allowing them to mix together their skills. Yooka will get things involving his tongue and color changing, such as turning invisible to sneak around, eating certain objects to gain elemental properties, or using his tongue like a hookshot to zip up to higher areas. Laylee gets an echolocation shot and a burst to deal with glass or sleeping statues, but her flight, despite its awkward controls, is definitely her biggest contribution, allowing you to really move around the wide open worlds once you unlock it. The two do have simpler combo moves, such as Yooka rolling in a ball and Laylee riding him for a speed boost, or Laylee just helping to break Yooka’s fall by flapping her wings, but in general, the moveset feeds into the level exploration pretty well, even if the game doesn’t explain powers like Yooka’s elemental absorption too well.
The various tasks to get Pagies are the meat of the experience though, so everything really hinges on how well your abilities feed into acquiring them. Many of the challenges, thankfully, are quite diverse and enjoyable. Timed movement challenges, arranging an area so you can navigate it properly, figuring out little puzzles on what ability will lead to the desired outcome, Yooka-Laylee is definitely at its best when you’re putting your core powers to the test. In fact, this is why many areas feel open to the player finding their own path, using clever movement to skip a challenge without it feeling like you just broke the game doing so. The more interesting ones are definitely where characters are involved, these individuals not just contextualizing things a bit, but giving a bit of color to the action and allowing for the puzzles with more unique solutions or minigames. Things like figuring out how to help a living hot tub have bubbles again or help a living cloud start precipitating add a different kind of challenge to the mostly platforming focused Pagies, but when the game really tries to shift up the design of Pagie challenges, it starts becoming more hit and miss.
There are a few consistent aspects of the worlds in Yooka-Laylee that don’t really do it any favors. Every world features a Rextro arcade challenge, a dinosaur meant to evoke 64-bit polygonal graphics giving you minigame challenges that you have to complete twice that range from odd to control, too long and too dull, to tolerable at best. Kartos, a living minecart, has you collect gems along a minecart riding challenge, the number needed in later versions high enough to force repetition of this minigame style that focuses less on the quick reaction it seems to be angling for and more on learning the track and gem placement through unfortunate repetition. Dr. Puzz, a half-octopus, half-human scientist will transform Yooka and Laylee into weird creatures, and while playing a school of piranha, a pollen-spraying flower, or a sailboat has its moments, it only has one or two Pagies tied to them, making most feel like they’re gone before you got the chance to put them through their paces. Bosses can be a mixed bag too, these almost more like deadly Pagie challenges than tough fights, mainly because combat is only a small factor in the game. If viewed as a battle they can be a bit wanting, especially the battle against Brrreeze Blok which is about slowly melting an ice boss, but death is only punished by a room or area reset without you losing any collectibles, the final boss even proving to be quite the challenging gauntlet to make up for bosses that are sometimes more movement puzzle than a battle. Even less gimmicky Pagies can have problems too, such as any that involve moving a ball like the golf challenges as you mostly nudge them around rather than really guiding them to their destination, and others might be multi-stage Pagies where it feels like you completed a task worthy of reward only to find you just started a longer chain of actions.
Luckily, you only need 100 of the 145 Pagies in the game to complete it, and a thorough exploration of the five worlds and Hivory Towers can mean you can skip Pagie challenges you find less exciting or repetitive. Some Pagies are only achievable with skills from later levels though, but you can still squeeze most of the content out in one visit despite there being a few unfortunate barriers cropping up to avoid a full sweep. There is a mechanic to the game where each world can be expanded after you pay a certain amount of Pagies, adding new challenges and areas to explore, but for the most part it’s easy enough to just expand the world the moment you find it. The worlds can be prohibitively large at times though. While it’s great for that initial visit, making for a wonderland full of opportunity, and the landmarks and identifiable areas do make navigating through them gradually easier, the size can still making collecting more difficult, especially for completionists. Yooka-Laylee has plenty of cheekily hidden Quills with few ways to track the items you’re missing, and some stages have large open areas with nothing going on in them such as the water in the ice level or the the dangerous muck of the marsh. Side areas may often have small entrances that are easy to miss, and the difficulty of getting every last Pagie and Quill in the game probably is where Yooka-Laylee comes up short to some players. There are plenty of enjoyable challenges and silly moments to invite the player in and give them great activities to engage with, but the openness of the world invites you to dig in deeper, and you end up pushing past the better content to scrounge up the weaker stuff. The fun of completing the strong stuff to start with is forgotten as you clean up the remaining challenges that come up short, but the inherent fun of the exploration and Pagie tasks shouldn’t be forgotten just because of the duds.
THE VERDICT: Yooka-Laylee is a game of highs and lows, but luckily the highs win out. Platforming challenges, fun power use, and the game’s puzzles and time challenges all fit the design of a collectathon well, making unlocking a new area in Yooka-Laylee bound to provide a period of excitement as you explore every new sight on the horizon. The worlds are a bit too large for their own good and it hurts the 100% collecting experience, especially as you must play the weaker Pagie challenges like the minigames with Rextro and Kartos, but when Yooka-Layle keeps its focus on the skills of the main duo and how the player can use them to overcome the challenges as intended or with creative workarounds, Yooka-Laylee can still provide plenty of lighthearted and sometimes funny play, even if it isn’t on the level of its inspiration Banjo-Kazooie.
And so, I give Yooka-Laylee for PlayStation 4…
A GOOD rating. It’s easy to forget games like Banjo-Kazooie did have less exciting worlds or challenges, and perhaps its the modern sensibilities that lead to over-accentuating the worse Pagie challenges in Yooka-Laylee, but there are still enough enjoyable ones to be had, enough to even complete the game without having to delve into the dull arcade games or annoying minecart challenges. If the worlds were condensed in size though the game would definitely benefit, because a lot of the thrill is that early exploration, and having to scrounge around after uncovering what you can does make the later Pagies less exciting. Still, the design of many of the challenges means many of these large levels instead feel like they’re teeming with opportunity rather than stretched beyond their means, with most of the tasks you need to complete being enjoyable to overcome and some rewarding creative use of the environment or skills to work around the intended solution. The colorful characters, quirky humor, and personality to places like Capital Cashino really help to add an extra bit of spice to the adventure, and while it is understandable many would nitpick a game so highly anticipated, Yooka-Laylee’s core is developed well enough to make it mostly enjoyable, the flaws mostly on the completionist side of play that admittedly do hurt what should have been one of the game’s main draws.
Yooka-Laylee does successfully hearken back to the days of Banjo-Kazooie, unafraid to be blatant about its influences, but being so close in spirit does make it easier to see its small missteps. On its own Yooka-Laylee is a colorful game full of platforming challenges and interesting tasks to scratch a collectathon itch, but not every Pagie challenge is a winner, and while it’s got far more fun tasks than flawed ones, the weaker ones do inevitably stick out, especially since the most flawed ones have characters devoted to presenting them. When compared to the solidness of Banjo-Kazooie it is the lesser game, but if you let yourself dive into the worlds and explore them on their own merits rather than asking yourself if they’re 100% up to snuff, Yooka-Laylee still provides plenty of enjoyable content that nails what it’s going for.