2017 is gearing up to be the year of a 3d
platformer revival. We have Mario Odyssey slated for a holiday
release, fingers crossed A Hat in Time will finally make its debut, and of course the
first one to show up and bring nostalgia back from an almost 20 year absence is Yooka-Laylee. With the same dev team that made Banjo Kazooie
coming back for another round, I had high hopes for this game - it seemed like all the
right jiggies were in place for another masterpiece. But did it deliver? Well, to get a fuller picture, we need
to take a look at what made Banjo so endearing back in 1998. Letâs talk about it. If I could sum up all the greatness of Banjo-Kazooie
into one word it would be CHARM. The bear and bird were polar opposites of
each other - Banjo being the happy go lucky protagonist, while Kazooie was snarky, pessimistic,
and full of rude quips. Gruntilda was such an unforgettable villain
as she always spoke in rhyme and reminded you of her looming presence every step of
the way. But even the minor characters all had distinct
personalities shown prominently by their unique speech patterns, from a burping hippo captain
to a (kind of?) racist snake charmer? The levels themselves were expansive yet simple
at the same time. While there were a lot of diverse areas to
explore, everything was placed for a specific reason. Distinctive landmarks made navigation and
memorizing the level layouts very simple - it sort of felt like a theme park, where you
could get on all the different rides that each location had to offer, like climbing the giant
snowman in Freezeezy Peak or clearing Jinxyâs nostrils in Gobiâs Valley. And the crazy thing is, they KNEW that all
of these locals and characters were memorable because they test you on them at the end of
the game in Gruntyâs Furnace Fun, more on that later. But what has always stuck out to me most about
Banjo is the secrets. If you collect all the notes and jiggies it
unlocks double health to give you extra help in the final boss fight. And the way it handled cheat codes was particularly
clever. If you found the secluded spellbook Cheato,
he would give you a code to double your feather and egg storage, but you entered them on the
sandcastle floor of Treasure Trove Cove that was used for another jiggy earlier on - reusing
assets for multiple purposes, SMART. But of course the cherry on the mystery cake
was the secret eggs and ice key used for Stop ânâ Swop. Long story short, these were extremely hidden
collectibles that would unlock special abilities and rewards in the sequel, Banjo Tooie, if
you had save data for both games. It was so ahead of its time that it wasnât
even possible on the N64, but now on Xbox Live this vision is fully realized. Rareware had big plans for these games even
from their inception and the way it teased you with something you just couldnât reach
was so genius â it planted natural craving and curiosity in your brain, and delivered
in an out of the box way no one else was doing at the time. Speaking of Banjo Tooie, while it stumbles
in a lot of ways as a 2nd installment, a lot of cool aspects are in place here â particularly
how the different worlds are all connected and you can travel between them through shortcuts
or train stations. I had no idea that when I retrieved stolen
treasure from a sleeping caveman I was actually leaving the first world and entering the 5th. And then when I came back to the same area
through Terrydactyland I was like, âOH NO WAY!â Interconnectivity is the name of the game
- in Banjo-Kazooie you could complete every stage in one go except for one instance where
you need a powerup from a different level, but in Tooie, jiggies are interwoven all over
the place and many different abilities from various worlds are needed to collect them. This was the kind of stuff I was so excited
for in Yooka-Laylee. After such a long hiatus, I could only expect
that the ex-guys from Rare had more crazy ideas to put into practice with their first
IP as Playtonic Games. And without a doubt, a lot of the appeal that
made Banjo great has made its way into Yooka. The humor is still on point, the characters
are silly and unique. I stand by saying that Capital B is one of
the most creative ideas for a villain in the history of video games â itâs a triple
entendre! (You see, cuz he is a bee, Heâs a business
man so he wants capital, and heâs Capital B like the big bad boss.) On top of that you have hilarious ideas like
a literal trouser snake and an old school dinosaur named Rextro. Itâs just perfect. Not to mention the cameos from other indie
games, and the heart strings of nostalgia being pulled straight out of your chest and
thrown on the floor. But while the basic premise is virtually the
same â quirky animal duo collects items to unlock worlds and go on a wild adventure,
some things are improved for a nice touch. Like the ghost writers, which are Yookaâs
version of Jinjos â you donât just collect them in this game, you have to complete some
sort of task for them to be accessible, like using your sonar sense to cause invisible
spirits to appear, feeding hungry ones some food, or even fighting them! Probably the best thing that Yooka-Laylee
does is the âexpanding the world systemâ. If you collect enough pagies, you can either
unlock new areas, or enlarge old ones. So if youâre enjoying one level a lot, you
can just grow it to experience more instead of moving on. The stage that does this best is Tribalstack
Tropics, itâs pretty big to begin with, but when you expand it, it becomes gigantic,
with so much more to do. However, as you progress further, it costs
more pagies to broaden worlds, so they need to have more pagies hidden behind these expansions
to make them worth it. So by the time you reach the 5th world, if
you donât alter it, thereâs only like 3 islands and just a couple pagies you can
collect. Also, thereâs only 5 levels in the whole
game by the way. Theyâre big, but I would have rather
seen 10 smaller worlds, but hey to each their own. To get the best experience with the expansion
system, I recommend spending an hour or so in the smaller versions of the level first
to get the hang of everything and become familiar with major landmarks. This way you appreciate the changes that happen,
rather than seeing a giant world from the start that might seem overwhelming at first. At least I think this was how they intended
it to be done anyway. Unfortunately, this is about where the good
qualities end. The negatives of Yooka-Laylee highly outway
the positives, and its biggest crime of all is a lack of polish, which is very apparent
within the first few hours of playing the game. There are a bunch of little problems that
could have easily been fixed with a few simple changes or a little more time in development
to work out the kinks. Like how the camera faces Yooka and Laylee
when you enter a room, instead of behind them toward the open area, which can cause you
to fall off cliffsides if youâre not careful. On top of this, camera perspectives will change
when you enter trigger points which can make platforming near impossible in some spots. Itâs bizarre when it happens, it feels like
a game made in 2017 should not have these problems. Some cutscenes and textboxes arenât skippable,
but others are, which is really confusing. It would be one thing if you couldnât speed
them up at all, but because you can part of the time, it becomes really jarring when you
reach some dialogue that canât be skipped, itâs inconsistent and annoying because the
base speed of the text is really slow. But to be fair, they have recently patched
this in an update - showing that indeed it was a simple little adjustment that probably
should have been included from the get go. Iâm surprised no one is really talking about
this, but thereâs only 6 types of enemies in the entire game â basic henchmen, big
strong spiky dudes, robot sentries, underwater jellyfish, military bees and eyeballs that
attach to nearby objects. Thatâs it â which is very underwhelming
when compared to the Banjo games where each area has unique and varied foes related to
the levelâs theme. The main corplets do change aesthetically
in each stage, but their mechanics are exactly the same. Combat in general feels like an afterthought in this
game, and baddies are haphazardly placed without much forethought. There arenât any checkpoints or warp pads
in Yooka-Laylee, so when you die, you respawn at the last doorway you walked through, which
could easily be on the other side of the map and you have to make the slow trek back to
where you were. One time, I fell off a really high platform
all the way down to the ground, and the only way to get back up there is to start the arduous
climb once again. In fact, I wish that I had just died instead
because it would have respawned me closer to where I fell. This is frustrating and time-wasting to say
the least, especially when its predecessor in the year 2000 had a better system. Quills are Yooka-Layleeâs version of Notes,
but they again seem placed at random and without any particular direction. In Banjo-Kazooie, the notes were either along
the main path you would take to explore the map or guiding you toward secrets or hidden
collectibles, but in Yooka the quills are sometimes just as hidden as the pagies, and
donât really guide you in any significant way â theyâre more decoration than anything. But on top of all this, there are significant
design decisions that seem to be direct downgrades from Banjo titles. Instead of gathering items like feathers or
eggs to use your abilities, Yooka-Laylee has an energy bar that depletes as you use it. While you can collect upgrades to increase
its size, the bar recharges very slowly, and awkwardly, like why? So basically, rather than having limited ammunition
that you can stock up on, your new resource is time. And when you run out, you just have to wait. And we all know how fun that is. Letâs talk about Dr. Quackâs Quiz Time,
Yookaâs incorporation of a trivia minigame. Gruntyâs Furnace Fun was a hilarious surprise
the first time you see it because in place of a final boss battle youâre greeted with
an over the top, ridiculously wacky game show. Itâs the final exam before the ending, testing
you on all the different things youâve experienced, and you get to choose what types of questions
youâre asked based on the tiles of the board. These include deciphering a specific map by
only a screenshot, knowing whoâs voice matches which character, or even questions about Gruntyâs
personal life that you find out by speaking to her sister Brentilda. You can try your luck at joker spaces to get
skips if you donât want to do a particular tile, and you have to watch out for death
squares that launch you into the lava pit below if you get the answer wrong. Now, hereâs Yooka-Layleeâs quiz show. On top of trying to bank on nostalgia, it
is just inferior in every way. One straight line, 10 random questions, 3
strikes youâre dead. Even worse, this happens 3 times throughout
the game instead of once at the end â the first of which occurs after visiting just
one world. So rather than testing your vast knowledge
of all the crazy things youâve experienced, it asks you questions like âhow many quills
have you collected so farâ, you know, something every player would know off the top of their
head. It becomes a terrible nuisance really quickly,
so instead of saying âoh boy, this might be a challengeâ you say âoh come on, not
this again!â Itâs frankly ridiculous that this is in
the final game in this state. Even the transformations felt uninspired. In each world, these different forms you turn
into are used for 1 or 2 pagies at best, and thatâs about it. In Banjo, it felt like they were much more
vital to your quest, letting you reach new areas you couldnât as the bear and bird
or pushing you to think outside the box. Like in Mad Monster Mansion, I was stumped
for weeks on how to get this jiggy that was JUUST out of my reach, but it blew my mind
when I figured out you could go on the rooftop via the maze, opening up a whole new world
of possibilities as the pumpkin. You could even take these transformations
outside of the levels to find hidden secrets in Gruntyâs Lair like the aforementioned
Cheato books, or raising the water level to progress in the game. Not to mention that they were super cute too! In Yooka, you get this snow plow thatâs
terrible to control but they expect you to do precise platforming with. So thereâs that. Nah, some of them I did enjoy like the school
of piranha fish that can fit in tight spaces or the pirate ship equipped with different
types of cannons to blow up rocks, but overall they felt constricted, shoehorned and like
a missed opportunity. Some of the abilities were really confusing
too. Thereâs one called Sonar âSplosion and
I thought the description was cheekily telling me it breaks glass, so when I saw a cracked
window I tried it out, but to no avail. Twice I found what seemed to be an obvious
connection to this ability, but nope, turns out thereâs another move called Reptile
Rush that is specifically used to break through glass panes. Instead, Sonar âSplosion is used to pop
balloons or destroy crowds of enemies. I guess they really werenât kidding when
they said âdonât use near glassâ...but why mention it at all then? The moves are fitting in relation to what
a chameleon and bat would have, but I think they could have done better at explaining
what they do in practice, like how turning invisible also redirects a laser beam if you
stand under it, or how Yookaâs tongue can extend to ridiculous lengths if heâs reaching
for a Lizard Lash contraption even though his tongue is only this long normally. Wait does Yooka have TWO TONGUES??? Rextro and Cartos crack me up because theyâre
whole shtick is that theyâre outdated gaming conventions that nobody wants to play anymore,
so they poke fun at modern tropes like pay to win systems or microtransactions, but then
their actually gameplay is just as bad as it has been in the past. Rextroâs arcade games are glitchy, drawn
out Mario Party minigame rejects that are not fun in the slightest. And Cartos complains about how minecart challenges
arenât popular anymore, but his levels are annoying and cumbersome to control â I have
to assume that this is the joke, otherwise itâs a downright travesty. But ironically, what has disappointed me most
about Yooka-Laylee is what it SHOULD have done the best - its incorporation of secrets,
or lack thereof I should say. Thereâs a ton of instances where I think
something special might be hidden, but then it turned out to be underwhelming - especially
in the overworld of Hivory Towers. For example, I found this library book puzzle
where I thought it might be some sort of code system to input cheats, but no it was
a simple little brainteaser to unlock a pagie. Thereâs this giant menacing machine that
sucks up all the pages of the world and it has extensive security and a giant button
at the entrance. Oh man, this must be a crazy secret, maybe
it unlocks when you collect all the pagies in the game - nope you just have to knock
over these huge books to press the button and you get a pagie. You know how I said everything in Banjo was
there for a purpose? Yooka has all sorts of areas that seem to
be important, but end up being meaningless - simple fluff to make the world seem bigger
like this giant pit of acid, seriously no idea why this is here. Itâs not on your totals screen, but there
is one extremely hidden type of collectible in every world called pirate treasure, and
there seems to be a cloud of mystery around it when you find them - what could they be
used for? Guess what - it does nothing. It literally just unlocks achievements. Good job for finding them, you! But worst of all, is that Playtonic tried
to build suspense with secrets ever since the toybox demo they released to early backers. If you collect all the quills in the toybox,
it unlocks a hidden room, and when you find it, this robot tells you about a secret clue
in the real game that you can reveal by ground pounding on a specific island next to a pirate
ship. When I found this before the game released,
I was so excited to discover what this could possibly be! So I scoured the game trying to track down
the island, and when I finally did in the last world, sure enough, a little robot comes
out of the sky to give you your reward! When you talk to him, he says âloading exposition
50.1%, please be patientâ and thatâs...it. Youâve got to be kidding me. Now, I can only assume this means that these
hidden clues will play a role in their next game, and triggering the dialogue here will
unlock something new in their next adventure, but it doesnât explain any of that and in
the moment, it was such a huge letdown to have all this build up of a big reveal, only
to find this in its place. I canât begin to describe my disappointment
with the lack of secret stuff in Yooka, especially knowing the minds behind the game - this should
have been the one area that they excelled at! But instead, it feels about as bare bones
as it gets. And thatâs probably the greatest problem
with Yooka-Laylee. Like I said, itâs biggest disservice is
lacking polish - it feels like a tech demo - playable but unfinished. So many of Yookaâs problems could have been
fixed if they simply gave it another 6 months to a year in development to work out all the
problems and add more meat to sink our teeth into. People are calling Yooka-Laylee the spiritual
successor to Rareâs golden franchise - the Banjo Threeie weâve been waiting for, but
in this current state, itâs more like Banjo Kazooie .5...HD. All that being said, I still enjoyed the game! It was a fun little experience for what it
was, and they rely on the nostalgia pretty hard, so if youâre a fan of Rareâs previous
platformers, Iâm sure youâll find charm here as well. But I know that the developersâ potential
is much greater than this. It feels like they wanted to rush this game
out to meet a deadline, and the gameplay suffered extensively for it. Now I can only hope that Yooka-Laylee was
a warm up, and a sequel or new title by Playtonic will have some real thought put into it. Until then, we have games like A Hat in Time
just around the corner. While it doesnât have a release date yet,
they have promised that it will be in 2017, and this game has been in development for
almost 5 years, most of which has been putting finishing touches and adding polish to the
final product. The beauty of the 3D Platformers of yesteryear
came from all the little details and things below the surface. You can make a game that has all the right
elements, but without the care and charisma it wonât be remembered. So hereâs to looking to the future. No doubt the audience has a desire for this
type of game, and there are many more on the way. Even titles like Snake Pass, while more a
puzzler, still embody that level of nostalgia and magic while also trying something totally
new from a gameplay perspective, so I hope to see even more innovation and new things
in the genre in games to come. Tell me your thoughts on Yooka-Laylee, obviously
Iâve talked long enough about it, do you think it was up to snuff? Or are there areas you wish it had improved
as well? Tell me in the comments below, and letâs
talk about it. All of this critique comes out of a place
of love for this genre, and I canât wait to see what happens next. So thanks for watching, Iâll see you guys
next time, and stay frosty my friends! Hey guys, todayâs episode was sponsored
by Dollar Shave Club and they have a great opportunity for you that can help support
this channel. If you go to dollarshaveclub.com/snomangaming
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Really well done video. I enjoyed YL a lot, probably more than he did from the sounds of it, but his points are spot on; and I agree. Also super awesome that he mentions Hat twice, well deserved.
I have to agree on the lack of secrets part. He mentioned something about how it's the little things below the surface that add longevity to these kinds of games, and I think that B-K and B-T are better in that regard. In Yooka-Laylee, some of the characters felt a bit slapped together and out of place.
There were a few really good ones, of course, and it isn't a universal problem. Still, I would love to see more secrets and more varied characters/baddies per locale in a sequel. Also, maybe 6 or 7 worlds just to make it really beefy.
I'm perfectly fine not having interconnected worlds, though, since implementing that in a cohesive and time-respecting way is very difficult and probably not worth the trouble.
Glad it's not just me perturbed by how awkwardly the stamina meter refills.
Wish one of the mainstream YouTube reviewers got hit by the Capital Cashino pagie glitch which might speed up a patch.