Summary
This game is firmly in the collectathon platformer genre of games and seeks to outright revive the soul of Banjo-Kazooie and extract it into a new body. The fresh coat of paint with all new characters and modern graphical styling is an attempt to distance itself from retro aesthetics while keeping some charming aspects. Gone are the convoluted controls and returning are the random chirping noises for dialog. But is the upgrade from collecting the jiggies to ordering the pagies enough to make this title distinct? The soul of the collectathon is here, lets find out if it was worth the cost of digging it up.
Controls
I want to get this out of the way really quick and head off my review here by saying that the controls are good. They aren't amazing but since I'm going to largely be comparing this to games that just had their 25th anniversaries, I think its fair to say that controls are a real highlight for innovation here. With a similar number of buttons to the old N64 titles, we've packed in a lot of moves here and the flow is miles better. They aren't perfect however.
My main gripe is just that they seem to have mapped controls in a retro way for nostalgia reasons and it holds the game back. Rather than triggering the moves organically through context, the left trigger is again used as a face button modifier. Jump with A, high jump with LT+A. Sonar ping with Y, Sonar explosion with LT+Y. They didn't need to do that but at least the animations are short to trigger so it isn't too painful.
Characters: What did the evil Bee ever do to you?
Lets talk about characters. This is par for the course if you're talking Banjo-Kazooie parody that the game NEEDS strong characters. So does this game have them? I'd argue it does not. It isn't even that I don't find the evil capitalist bee and his duck in a jar henchman to be unlikable, its just that they lack the personality and novelty that BK had. The evil witch in those games wasn't complicated, but the rhyming of their lines and personality really got sold in the dialog. Here you just have throwaway lines galore about money puns. I don't want to say that none of the characters have personality, but its a 7/10 effort for sure.
That carriers over throughout the various worlds and main characters themselves. Banjo-Kazooie had a way with its humor of being dumb but delightful fun and really didn't stop you to embellish stupid puns. I won't harp on how I didn't find this game funny, but man when games miss the mark on charm, they really miss it by a mile. Unfortunately that's kind of the case here so don't show up for the characters.
Gameplay: It blends right in
I'll also keep this brief like the controls section. The game is good and the levels are pretty well laid out. They struggle to feel as integrated as BK though in the sense that each pagie is in its own area with its own objects. I remember how BK would use the same large centerpiece snowman for 3 or 4 jiggies, that just isn't here though. So like I said, it ends up feeling like each level is just a bunch of puzzles adjacent to each other, not cohesive at all. The themes really don't help that either as the themes only play into the gameplay of the level half of the time.
Graphical Style: It looks like it plays, alright?
The graphics in this game are actually pretty good and the game ran really well during my time with it at 1440p. That makes it a very good game to run on a steam deck and that is how I played about 50% of this game. The colors are bright and vibrant and its just a shame that it isn't more stylized. Believe it or not, I don't think the extreme crispness of the graphics help the game here. If you're especially brave though, there is an N64 graphics mode in the game which is a nice touch and brings in some of that charm.
Wrapping this up
Normally I keep my thoughts organized here but I think this game really deserves discussion so here goes. I went into this game expecting for the developers to have really done something with the formula. Lets be honest, this genre died because of a lack of innovation and intrigue. I was very surprised to play this and find that not only had the formula not really grown since the BK days of 1997, but this game had regressed it by quite a bit and I just really had to push through to finish it.
The music isn't instantly classic like Banjo-Kazooie, instead it sounds mostly generic. The characters are much the same. BK always had a splash of absurdity but it also always had grounding in its world. Lacking that grounding here is absolutely killer and so each element of this game feels separate. The enemies in BK were always interesting. The obstacles also had personality. Banjo Kazooie had me fighting two dragons on the tops of volcanoes who both thought I was there to deliver them pizza. We never get anywhere close to those heights here sadly. You'll play through this game and without exaggerating I can say that you will wonder why there are even basic level enemies in this game at all.
So what we're left with in Yooka-Laylee is a shell of what these games used to be. That isn't to say this is a bad game. It belongs in the genre 100% and its what the genre is all about. If you love collectathons and you don't want to replay BK games or want a modern version of this, I'll recommend this to you. Most people would have an alright time with this game and especially kids I think would love this if their attention can be kept by it. Those are my thoughts though, the game is decidedly average for me and I wish I could say otherwise. I respect the developers immensely for their work here. It takes a lot of work to even put most of the soul of BK into a game like this and so even if it didn't entirely land for me, I applaud them. Hopefully I feel very differently as I move onto Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair.
Thanks for taking the time to read my review and let me know your thoughts in the comments!
