Yooka Laylee Reviews
Yooka-Laylee is classic 3D-era platformer. It brings an updated presentation to the genre, and it provides some solid and familiar platforming mechanics. The large levels provide a nice playground for those abilities, and while the combat isn't anything special, it's a lot of fun to complete the various tasks to collect pagies. If you can deal with the problematic camera, Yooka-Laylee is worth checking out.
Platforming ain’t dead. Yooka-Laylee however doesn’t really break any new ground. It does, however, apply a nice fresh coat of paint over the old mechanics of Banjo-Kazooie. The mini-games throughout provide some variety from the usual jumping around, but they rarely captured my interest for more than a minute or so. It is a great modern take on the platformer genre, but the bright colors and quirky music quickly dull after a couple hours when you find the game has little else to offer. Perhaps some will revel in the return of the collect-em-up, but the gameplay, however well-made and tight it is, seldom seems rewarding.
Yooka-Laylee is a great platformer featuring a ton of collectibles and great worlds to explore – hence it being a collectathon. The worlds feature some great designs, and the different collectibles were fun to discover. I think that this game might have benefited from a slightly longer development cycle to address some of the camera issues I ran into, but as I said before, it's certainly not a deal-breaker. If you've been hankering for a new take on the great 3D platformers of ages past, then give Yooka-Layle a play today!
It doesn't revitalize or even attempt to change the formula. Despite that Yooka-Laylee is colorful and musical and comforting. Yooka-Laylee may not represent a revival for the collect-a-thon genre, but it is an acceptable sequel, successor, parody and homage to a game now regarded as classic.
Yooka-Laylee is gorgeous. It is a delight to behold. But its design and mechanics don't always match up to its ambitions.
Yooka Laylee is a move in the somewhat dead genre of 3D platforming and its presence between platforming giants like Ratchet & Clank and Super Mario Odyssey feels a great gap. What doesn't make this game satisfying however are the controls and camera which stick to the game from the get go and don't let go. Despite this, Yooka Laylee is recommended to the younger demographic considering its price and amount of content; even if the whole game might get underwhelming
Review in Persian | Read full review
Yooka-Laylee is an unabashedly old-school platformer with modern presentation. It is challenging and occasionally infuriating, but it's also extremely rewarding. Playtonic have proven that just because something is old, that doesn't mean it should die.
For better and for worse Yooka-Laylee accomplishes exactly what it sets out to do. A throwback to a time when 3D platformers reigned supreme, but it holds on to nostalgia too closely, never quite coming into its own. The lack of new gameplay ideas, a camera that gets in the way far too often, and too much of a focus on old gameplay tropes keeps Yooka-Laylee from being great.
All in all, Yooka Laylee is neither as bad or good as most say. It’s a solid platformer that caters to the old school crowd while occasionally getting lost and muddled in the game mechanics of a time long gone. There is charm and wit in its writing, and frustration in its controls. For every positive, there is a negative. The takeaway is an extremely okay platforming experience with extreme amounts of nostalgia and decent potential for a future franchise.
If you think that, It's not a Banjo-Kazooie game, it's a 10-star game when we consider it as a separate game. Get it and definitely try it.
Review in Turkish | Read full review
Likely to appeal to the game’s twin demographics of children and, er, inner children.
Despite the defects and bitter aftertaste, Playtonic's Yooka-Laylee fulfills in part its main promise: one of bringing back the nostalgic N64 platformer games.. This highly respected tribute to the productions of the Rare era should undoubtedly be a great pick its fans, with the same gameplay mechanics, colors, worlds, and themes, but in the end lack the soul and flair that made that old generation what it is.
With bright colorful palette, cartoony soundtrack, and goofy cast of characters, Yooka-Laylee is sure to be a hit with younger players, as well as an older crowd eager to relive gaming's past glories in 3D platforming and adventuring in an open world format. It's a visually beautiful game with a brilliant soundtrack, bringing together Rare's technical and creative talents to the table for Playtonic Games' debut. It was a fully des vu experience, reliving waves of warm nostalgia as it was happening in front of me.
Yooka–Laylee is an unexpected gift from Playtonic Games that proves once again how the 3D platform genre can still entertain after almost 20 years. Despite being very funny and inspired, the game has several flaws, with the camera and the control mechanics being the biggest ones. Even if the gameplay is far from the perfection, if you loved old 3D platforms such as Super Mario 64 and Super Mario Sunshine, you will definitely enjoy the new Yooka-Laylee from Playtonic, but if you're new to this genre you might experience a difficult-to-manage gameplay that is not good as most of the modern platforms available today.
Review in Italian | Read full review
I really wanted to like Yooka-Laylee. I don’t. Instead of taking a beloved style of game and updating it for modern times (à la Doom last year), Playtonic essentially created a game that could have been from 1998 and released it in 2017. The result is a mess of poorly implemented game mechanics that the games industry fixed two decades ago.
Yooka-Laylee is aimed at the revival of N64-era of Rare platformers and while it succeeds in delivering a similar experience, it also fails to improve on some of the archaic design of the past resulting in a game that is enjoyable but not without some frustrating design flaws. [Khurram Imtiaz separately reviewed the PS4 (8) and Switch (8) versions.]
The platforming is fast and delightful, with plenty of abilities to use, items to find, and areas to explore. Charming characters, clever humor, and lots of bright colors all serve to enhance the gameplay as well.
A spiritual successor to Banjo-Kazooie, Yooka-Laylee is exactly what it is trying to be. It suffers from few flaws like poor camera and very unstable frame-rate, and it doesn't add anything new to the platformer genre. But a lot of gameplay mechanics, good graphic, amazing sound make it enjoyable.
Review in Persian | Read full review