Hooo man, Yooka-Laylee... It's rare we feel the need to cover a current game, but Yooka-Laylee's failings
were too spectacular to ignore. It fails to achieve nearly everything it set out to do, in turn simultaneously making the case for why these
types of retro revival Kickstarters are such a gamble, and ultimately why these types of games, exemplified
by Banjo Kazooie, died off in the first place. Playtonic promised a "Rare-vival",
however it's only surface-level. When you dive deeper into the
nuts and bolts - pun intended, Yooka-Laylee has no idea what
game it truly wants to be. I'm not sure if Playtonic were trying in
vain to evolve the collect-a-thon genre, or if they've simply forgotten
how to make one in the first place. The first problem is how levels are designed. Though only five levels and a hub world,
Yooka-Laylee is a massive game, but Playtonic makes next to no effort to
make any of it engaging or fun to explore. Levels feel like a collection of small sections
smashed together without nuance. This leads to entire levels vacillating
between either too busy or too barren. There's certainly a lot to do, but there's never any kind of
throughline or attention devoted on how levels should flow. Listen, when it comes to exploring and
collecting stuff in games, that is my jam! I'm here, it's me, let's do this! But if I have no idea where I'm going or where I've been,
I'm not going to feel any sense of accomplishment or have confidence that I've
cleared out an area of a level, so instead I just found myself wandering aimlessly. It's as if Playtonic thought simply giving
the player more places to explore automatically made exploring them fun, which, like... no! An easy fix for this should have been with the
golden quills, which are completely misused. Upon collecting your first golden quill in the hub world,
you are informed there are 200 of these in each level. This actually got me really excited! Images of pathways, cliffsides and caves lined
with quills immediately popped into my head, and... why wouldn't they? This is one of the defining images of the very games
Playtonic promised to be pulling inspiration from. Instead, quills are scattered far and wide, ignoring what
these types of low-tier collectibles are supposed to be. Breadcrumbs that subtly guide a player through a level! Imagine my surprise starting the first world
and staring down three different possible paths, seeing just a few quills! How are there 200
of these things, where the hell are they?! To explain why this was a mistake, we need only to go back to the very games
Playtonic promised to be pulling inspiration from. The giant worlds of Banjo-Kazooie and DK64, though
not quite as giant as Yooka-Laylee's, are more palatable because notes and bananas
respectively are used as a clever way to lead players through a level
without the benefit of a map. Though Banjo-Tooie scaled back on this
a bit by having notes appear in clumps, they were still used as a guiding tool. This process of elimination is not only what made
these otherwise rote collect-a-thon games satisfying, it also simplifies exploring and keeping
your bearings in enormous levels. There was a lot to collect, but the act
of collecting was a means to an end, not an activity solely unto itself! Though this is admittedly a problem that DK64 had. The opposite can work too: The carnage
left behind in Wolfenstein 3D and Doom was not only rewarding in its own right, you
could use it to discern where you've already been to better make your way through their
occasionally labyrinth-like levels. The slapdash levels of Yooka-Laylee
could have been easier to stomach if Playtonic had utilized the quills as a navigation tool, but instead they are sprinkled around without regard
for flow and are occasionally well-hidden to a fault. Here's an example: On a hunch I ran all the way down
this path and stumbled upon a single, solitary quill. When I saw this, my heart sank at the sudden realization that I am definitely going to be that
person who gets 199 quills on a level and then pulls their hair out trying to
search every crevice for that last quill. With so much to explore and without the
feeling of the designers meeting you halfway, collecting things in this collect-a-thon
throwback becomes a chore. Now thankfully, quills are not the
sole focus of Yooka-Laylee, but still: There's not much else going on in these levels. Your main task is collecting 25 Pagies in each
level by completing various tasks and minigames, but don't worry, they fumble this as well. An extremely common minigame is "Golly, I gotta
get through these hoops before time runs out!" Yeah, it's 2017 and Playtonic thought the big thing video
games needed more of was timed hoop-jumping minigames. They said they wanted to bring the N64 days back. Who'd have thought that also meant Superman 64? Grace, can you check and see if
anyone else has made that joke? But at least you get a time limit with the hoops. You do NOT for tasks that require a power-up,
like breathing fire or glowing in the dark. There's nothing fun about grabbing a power-up and
rushing back over to another area before it wears off, when there's no timer, no audio cues, especially when you're only just given
enough time, at least in my experience. And that's if you even have the special
move needed to accomplish the task! Yes, in an incredibly lazy attempt to
invoke Banjo-Tooie's backtracking style, you are constantly faced with puzzles
and tasks you cannot solve yet, and the game makes no attempt to inform
you that you are just wasting your time. But all you have to do is simply buy the right move, but that's of course if you can tell
which move you need from the list, if it's even available to you yet, or
that you have enough quills to afford it. Either way, good luck trying to remember
where the hell that area was. And then there's the issue with expanding levels. In an interview with Game Informer, managing
editor and creative lead Gavin Price explained that they wanted to split the difference
between Banjo-Kazooie and Banjo-Tooie, giving players the option to meta the games
based on which title they liked better. PRICE: Why don't we start the worlds of small and then, as and when players feel
like they've got the lay of the land and are comfortable with that,
they can expand the world. If a Tooie fan wants to expand the world early on , to them they're creating a big, huge-
huge world just like they like, and a Kazooie fan, they can start the game off smaller, and then when they want to, they can
expand the world when they feel like... DEREK: This is not made clear at all in the game, and indicates that Playtonic could not
make hard decisions in development. If you didn't want me to expand levels right away,
then don't tell me there are 25 Pagies in each level. Tell me there are 15, and THEN tell me there are 25! If you give me a list of things to collect on each level
but tell me I can only get them all if I expand each level, guess what! I'm expanding each
level the first second that I can! Which I did twice before even
stepping foot in levels 2 and 3. This is what I meant when I said they didn't
even know what they wanted this game to be. There's an even larger problem in all of this: The world just feels sterile, like I'm not really a part of it! And it's not even that it would
take that much to draw me in. For example, on the first level you encounter
a skeleton lady in some hot pot trouble, which was cool! Got me excited! I'm all the
way down to save a cool skeleton in peril! However, once I beat up the minions, she doesn't
climb out of the pot or even just phase out. She just hangs there. And then around the corner, it's Shovel Knight! Like, they didn't even hide him or give
him anything to do, he's just... there. "Oh, looks like I'm in the wrong game!"
Yeah, hilarious. Or how about Mr. Blowy -- yeah, Mr. Blowy --
who needs water to clear his throat, but after says "Great! I can get back to blowin' again!"
... but then he doesn't?! Shouldn't he create an entryway to a
new area or, I dunno... start blowin'?! Like, I wanna make a difference in this world! Sidequests are in and of
themselves a type of collectible, and robbing me of a visceral feeling that
I had accomplished something... blows! Yooka-Laylee is less a collect-a-thon
and more an open world game that's composed almost solely
of side mission busywork. Imagine Grand Theft Auto, but hidden packages and
obstacle course minigames are the main thrust of the game, not side stuff to be done at your leisure
or ignored altogether if you want. This is a massive game with tons of things to do, but
ultimately a game far less than the sum of its parts. It misses the mark as a collect-a-thon throwback, as a
traditional 3D platformer, and as an open world game. The game is also obsessed with itself, to the point where
I just wanna grab Playtonic and shake them and say: "I don't care about your insecurities or
whatever, I just wanna play your game!" "I wanna enjoy myself, I wanna be immersed
in your world, but... you just won't let me in!" The story is simplistic, but without any real charm, and while the occasional joke did get a chuckle out of
me, some of the fourth-wall breaking gags fall so hard, they practically read as confessions
from a development team that had quickly lost confidence that
this was a good idea in the first place, 'cuz... boy, nothing says funny like having your
character in your game talk about how boring it is, or how you wish you were playing a different
game, or how grating the voices are... PAST DEREK: What are you doing?!
What are you doing?!? Then don't make every character
in the fucking game talk like that!! Like... that's not funny!! PRESENT DEREK: Banjo and DK64 weren't
Shakespeare, but they were at least confident. I'm shocked I never happened upon
a jaunty, talking kitchen sink, saying: "Wow! They threw everything in this game,
what ideas didn't they use?! Wow!" And the disappointment just keeps coming, the damn camera still bumps into the
environment and abruptly snaps to new angles. It's not game-breaking and maybe something
they could tighten out in a patch, but geez! 20 years later and you guys still
can't make a working camera?! Controls feel loose too, moving about the
world just never feels as tight as it should. And it needs to be said: I hated the rolling move. You have to use it constantly,
and every time I did I hated it. It accelerates too quickly, it turns too wide,
and is an absolute pain, I HATED it. And I almost don't even wanna bring this up because it's
really subjective and a lot of people are gonna disagree, but... I personally found the
music completely forgettable, just... totally unmemorable! I mean c'mon, you got Grant Kirkhope and David Wise! These guys know how to write
some really tight melodies! $1,5 million for an orchestrated score, and this is it? I will say the music captures the vibe of Banjo-Kazooie, certainly sounds like they're using
the same instruments and tones. And really, that's the only other positive
thing I can say about Yooka-Laylee: They absolutely NAILED the look
and sound of those old games! The character design of Yooka and Laylee is top notch, and the levels may feel like they were designed in a rock
tumbler, but this is certainly not an ugly game! But y'know, I could squint my eyes and tilt my head and see how fellow Kickstarter disappointment
Mighty No. 9 could have been a good game. However, Yooka-Laylee is such a bloated,
sloppy, frustrating and ultimately boring mess, I cannot see how this could have
ever lived up to its forebearers. And I know it's weird to invoke Mighty No. 9,
but I bring it up because I'm sensing a pattern with these massively successful
Kickstartered games from storied developers. Some people like to take a cynical point of view that
studios like Double Fine, Comcept and Playtonic are "taking the money and running"
with their crowdfunding projects. We've always held that that's a bit harsh, but they're definitely showing that they
cannot be trusted with the money. For the record, we've not personally
backed any of these projects, and don't begrudge people who genuinely feel swindled. We're sure these developers had the best of intentions. No sane person actually sets out to make a bad game. And if they did, a multi-million dollar Kickstarter would
be, like, a God Tier way to commit career suicide! But there are a few things to consider here, first: These people were already in the industry,
they're already in the club! Crowdfunding is supposed to be for passionate
outsiders trying to break into the industry, and true, many careers got their big break from campaigns that
raised modest sums compared to Yooka-Laylee's millions. If publishers aren't interested in the projects career developers are pitching... maybe there's a reason! Maybe the idea is bad, or maybe
you ain't what you used to be. Another thing to consider: The limitation publishers
and studios push onto these career developers were ironically what made their
games great in the first place! "This is the game we've always wanted to make!"
is a great pitch, but people often forget that we didn't fall in love
with the unmitigated image of their creativity, we fell in love with their scrutinized,
compromised final project. Creativity needs to be questioned,
needs to be challenged. There's a moment in the Making Of
featurette on The Incredibles DVD, where producer John Walker is
talking down director Brad Bird from a complicated shot
that would be cut from the film. Walker ends the discussion with the plea that:
"I'm just trying to get us across the finish line." To which Bird replies: "I'm trying to get
us across the finish line in first place!" I'm sure these men hated each other,
but deep down they knew that their conflict was the actual mechanism
the finished film would pass through. You don't get this when you only answer to fans. The Internet sucks as a boss! It's
a great critic, but it's a fickle mistress, and we all know that throwing nostalgia
in the mix makes for a potent brew. It's a reason to be skeptical of Kickstartered games, but
as the bottom seems to have fallen out of this platform, I still have hope that some upcoming projects will
be able to learn from their peers and make it work. Hey, thanks for watching! If you didn't notice, hey! Stop Skeletons From Fighting
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Criticisms of the game seemed valid enough but the extrapolation about kickstarter in general at the end is terrible. He says that crowdfunding is supposed to be for passionate outsiders to break in to the industry, not only is that just some ridiculous preconception he has that has no basis in reality, one of the examples he gives of that turning out well is Shovel Knight, a game made by former WayForward staff, in other words not outsiders. Also using Strafe as a positive example is pretty ridiculous when the game has had a rocky launch to say the least. He can't even cherry pick properly. He could at least mention the things that contradict his views too, like Thimbleweed Park, FTL, or Chaos Reborn, just to provide some balance.
The idea that just because publishers won't fund a game, that means the game is a bad idea is also completely ridiculous. Publishers are by their very nature allergic to risk. But risk is the only way we get games that are actually interesting and fun. If you're happy endlessly playing whatever the cultural zeitgeist is (currently: Overwatch clones, MOBAS, Open World games and Roguelites), then you're set, publishers will cater to you, but if you want anything out of the ordinary, anything that isn't a guaranteed hit, crowdfunding is a great thing to have around. Yes, its a risk, and the nature of risk is that sometimes you're not going to get what you want, but we're far better off with a system where developers can get funding for riskier projects. Just look at what things were like 10 years ago when the indie scene was entirely made up of 2D platformers, and the AAA scene was entirely made up of shooters, thats what a AAA publisher-dominated industry looks like and I don't want to go back to it now that we have crowdfunding (and crowdfunding helped revive mid-budget publishers, thank fucking god, I've been waiting for them to come back ever since they died off after the PS2).
Publisher oversight can be valuable but for a solid decade or so, publisher oversight has consisted solely of demands to make games simpler and exactly like whatever is popular at the moment. Only very recently has that started to change.
Jesus... I stopped playing after the first hour. Seemed like a shame, but the game didn't draw enough attention from me. Now I'm glad I didn't force myself to play more.
I was honest-to-God hoping that Yooka-Laylee would be the game that would prove multi-million dollar Kickstarters could live up to the hype. However, even though I had tempered expectations about the game (given that I grew up on different games than Banjo Kazooie), I can't help but feel a little dissappointed that the end result turned out to be lambasted by critics and backers alike.
Here's to hoping that this and Mighty Number 9 will serve as a bit of a lesson on how a game on Kickstarter needs to have more than just nostalgia riding on its success.