I like the character designs, and the general vibe and humour of the game, certainly calls back to the classic collectathons of the late 90s/early 2000s. But the levels are sprawling and confusing, the controls are occasionally imprecise, the minigames all suck, and the way characters and objects are just bolted in place all static-like, it makes the game feel like a Unity demo. I kept waiting for it to get good, to ignite a bit of that old feeling I got playing Spyro the Dragon or Jak and Daxter or Banjo Kazooie, but it never did. For most of my time with this, I was just bored with it.

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Games I Like That Everybody Else Dislikes

Never understood why this is a hot take, but imo this is absolutely as good as any Banjo Kazooie game. It has its quirks but let's be honest, so do the originals. If there's any complaint, it's that your characters oddly feel too small in comparison to the levels - which makes some of the traversing feel a bit barren. It also does the "power ups that are only used in one or two specific circumstances ever" thing, but other than that I thought this totally passed the class. Unique character designs, nostalgic music, definable levels (unlike its sequel), a worthwhile challenge, fun collectables (except that one bullshit quill in the first level), and that classic sardonic humor commonly associated with the Rare platformer. Enemies are a little mid though. But by and large this is without a doubt a worthy successor to the 90s N64 collectathon genre. No clue where the hate is coming from; I get that a lot of people just absorbed their favorite YouTuber's opinion of this back in the day as their own without even giving it a fair shake, as is the case with a lot of these - but this is pretty much exactly what could have been hoped for out of this project. I found this to be a colorful, inspired, and overall lovely experience. Sorely underrated even by its supporters.

"Disappointed" is not a strong enough word to describe how Yooka Laylee made me feel. Banjo Kazooie is one of my favorite games from my childhood, so when the Yooka Laylee Kickstarter was announced, I backed it without hesitation at a high enough level to even get some extra goodies. I followed through every stage of this game's development and I was so unbelievably excited for its launch. So when I finally got my hands on this game and was greeted with an absolutely middling-quality collectathon that controlled like garbage and had noticeable input lag, I was crushed. This isn't the worst video game I've ever played, but I could make a case for it being the most disappointing game for me personally. Hey, at least the art and music is nice.

I hate this game. It's soooo stupid because I suck at it. And get this- there is a camera in the game and you have to control it. No other game makes you do that. Oh, and ewwww you have to collect things! I don't want to get anything ever in any game. Please just give me totally empty worlds- I don't want incentives to explore every corner.

And it's wayyy too long. No, I mean it's too short. It's too long and short. We should all just give a bad rating now because it will probably have DLC and all games with DLC are bad.

What's worst of all, it can't run perfectly on my computer which I just got eight years ago. OMG no, the very worst thing is that they removed an actor's voice from the game just because he was revealed to be a raving racist right before the launch of the game! Way to go you stupid democrats! I think I should've had a say in that matter. I helped fund the game on kickstarter from the very beginning, even though I hate the Banjo series and platformers in general. I thought this would be different.

I wouldn't say this game is bad, but I wouldn't say it's great either. If anything, I think this is one of the most "average" games I've ever played.

When I was younger, I never played Banjo. I was a Playstation kid, so I had access to platformers like Ratchet & Clank, Jak & Daxter, and Sly Cooper. I'm also no stranger to the multi-platform... platformers of the time like Ty the Tasmanian Tiger, Tak, Battle for Bikini Bottom and more. I love platformers, so when it was announced that the people who made the highly-regarded Banjo games were coming together to make a new adventure, I was pretty excited. After it came out, I found it to be... alright. I made it to about World 3 and then just put it down because I just wasn't getting anything out of it.

Around 2021, I finally gave Banjo a try and I loved it! Immediately after finishing it, I went on to try Tooie and came to a realization: it introduced a lot of similar problems I found in Yooka Laylee. The levels are huge and sprawling yet they have nothing in them. In their enormity, many of the landmarks look so similar that you just end up wandering forever looking for something to do. You have so many powers that if you put the game down for too long, you forget what moves you can do.

After putting down Tooie, I waited a bit and then later decided to go back to Yooka to give it another chance. I started a new save file and made it a little farther the second time, but I still ended up stopping after completing World 4. This time, I tried to pay attention to what made me disinterested. In addition to the above, I found a few more things:
- Most of the Rextro minigames are fine but not very interesting.
- The minecart sections are okay. I feel they don't really add much to the experience. I don't get much out of just speeding up or slowing down for obstacles.
- Most of the bosses are underwhelming, forgettable, and monotonous to fight.
- There's a single power meter linked to almost every move you can do. I think maybe it would be better if every move had its own cooldown. But my biggest question is why would you ever put a limit for running in a 3D collect-a-thon platformer, especially in one where the worlds are huge and empty?
- Some of the moves are awkward and don't work a good portion of the time. Yooka's tongue grapple move just refuses to work even when you're 3 feet away from your target, leaving you to fall to your death.
- Between every other world, you have Dr. Quack's Quiz Shows that are obvious callbacks to Grunty's Furnace Fun and Tower of Tragedy in the Banjo games. The difference between these is that the latter two are at the end of the each game, and they make it feel like the ultimate test; you've spent enough time in each level to actually remember them. In Yooka, the quizzes feel disjointed by being in the middle so you feel obligated to remember the most mundane things about the levels you just played for what's probably your first time.

When you take a step back and look at the game as a whole, it just seems like an unfocused mess. It relies so heavily on calling back to Banjo that it feels like it barely has its own identity. Despite all the negative things I've said, I get a feeling that there's a great game lost in here somewhere. Playtonic just needs to go back to the drawing board and find it. I very badly want to see them try again and succeed.

Yooka-Laylee should have been a return to classic form, but it's nothing more than mediocre. The core platforming is enjoyable, but it's marred by the need to constantly wrangle a camera that feels like it's working against you. The game's worlds are inconsistently designed, with unclear direction and unnecessarily large & empty areas. These areas are stuffed with bad minigames and side content that distract from the platforming which should take focus. There is some charm to this game when it comes to the look & the characters, but it's otherwise a poorly designed mess.

Banjo-Kazooie and Tooie are two of my favorite games of all time. I played BK in '99, so there's a ton of nostalgia there, but I didn't play Tooie until a few years ago, so there's no nostalgia there at all. I feel that they're both 10/10 experiences, and I backed Yooka-Laylee the very second the Kickstarter went live.

I think I was set up for the most disappointment possible. Since I am so hyper-familiar with the Banjo games, all of Yooka-Laylee's flaws and shortcomings were even more jarring to me.

The levels were too big and had too little in them, and what was there wasn't very interesting. In Banjo-Kazooie and Tooie, there aren't any repeated Jiggy challenges that show up in every level besides collecting Jinjos. in Yooka-Laylee, you repeated similar objectives constantly, and they weren't even fun. The characters' controls are cumbersome, the stamina meter is frustrating, combat is janky, and the whole thing just felt... rough.

I wanted to love it, but it felt like some rusty devs trying to get back into the swing of things. I'm really hopeful that they can shake the dust off and put out a fantastic 3D follow-up soon. (And if The Impossible Lair is any indication, they're already learning from their mistakes!)

Veredito: O Banjo 3 que sempre sonhamos, no melhor e no pior.

'Sucessor espiritual' de cu é rola: Yooka-Laylee é continuação direta dos Banjo-Kazooie, até o último detalhe. Não é só a dupla de animais falantes num coletaton feito pelas mesmas pessoas. A personalidade dos personagens é idêntica (Yooka = Banjo, Laylee = Kazooie, sem tirar nem por), boa parte das técnicas é análoga, os mesmos trocadilhos, o hub, colecionáveis, fases... tudo. Tiveram a audácia de deixar até a capa do jogo e a tela de pause iguais às de BK!

Infelizmente isso traz todos os ônus de um plataforma 3D noventista, mesmo depois de vários patches: a câmera é um lixo, a performance tropeça às vezes, algumas missões se repetem demais, e a falta geral de polimento é ridícula. Sim, Banjo-Kazooie e Banjo-Tooie também tinham todos esses problemas em algum grau, você que é nostálgico e não lembra. Mas muitas vezes Yooka consegue ser pior: as músicas são boas mas não tão perfeitas quanto as da época, e COMO DIABOS eles conseguiram destruir a mecânica de voo e o último chefe, coisas que BK já tinha acertado na mosca em 1998... é algo que nunca vou entender.

Dito isso, Yooka-Laylee é um jogo incrível. Os gráficos e sons são lindíssimos e mega charmosos, o humor típico dos jogos anteriores está super presente, os colecionáveis são uma delícia de procurar e pegar, as fases são maravilhosas tanto na estética quanto na mecânica... Enfim, o carinho dos devs pela obra é palpável, em cada detalhe. Sim, ele foi MUITO mal testado, não dá pra negar. Espero de verdade que a Playtonic faça um Tooka-Laylee com o polimento que este aqui deveria ter tido. Mesmo assim, é uma aventura de caças ao tesouro divertidíssima, deslumbrante e gigantesca, com tudo o que tem direito.

Se você é fã de longa data de Banjo como eu e sempre quis um Banjo 3, aqui está ele.

more of a gimmick showcase than a 3d platformer with some of the shittiest level design ive ever seen in a game. if this game was 100 hours shorter maybe itd be a bit tolerable but the sheer amount of garbage you have to deal with on top of this game getting by on people's radars solely for the pedigree of the studio and the nostalgia it gives off of a different and much better game gives me absolutely no good will for this piece'a dongo ass.

you cant even jump off of slopes, making uncharted 4 objectively a better platformer

Time to beat: 13 hours
Date beaten: November 9, 2021
Platform: XB1

Yooka-Laylee is a lovely retro homage loaded with hiccups. It doesn’t quite hit the highs of a classic Rare collectathon, but boy does it hit the lows.

+ Charm through the roof. The music, art direction, characters, and writing all nail the cozy, hilarious vibes of classic Rare

+ While there are only five worlds, they’ve each got enough content and visual variety to be a treat to explore and discover

+ Plenty of fun challenges and gameplay moments that ultimately outweigh the repetitive or poorly done parts

- The desire to explore is weakened by reused challenges, world expansion, move-gating, and disorientingly large levels

- Janky controls and frustrating mechanics pop up several times, such as with flight, minecart levels, the stamina meter, and those atrocious arcade games. And the final boss is Boring with a Capital B

- Yooka-Laylee is a Voltron of the worst aspects of old Rare collectathons. Banjo-Kazooie’s quiz show, DK64’s obtuse final boss, and Tooie‘s obsession with negative space (Note: since I originally wrote this review in 2021, I have concluded that Tooie does negative space well, but Yooka-Laylee definitely does not) are all back in force.

Sights & Sounds
- The game looks fantastic. The visuals are very similar to (but maybe a slight step down from) the Spyro remake's
- The environments are really well-crafted. The 5th world is especially unique and interesting. Looking at the achievement percentages, it's a shame that the majority of people who played this game haven't seen it
- The sound design is very faithful to the classic that this game pays homage to: Banjo-Kazooie. This is especially true of the music. You'll even see Grant Kirkhope's name in the credits
- One minor gripe is the "voice acting". It's just as annoying and ear-grating as it was when I was an 11 year old kid playing Banjo-Kazooie

Story & Vibes
- As you might expect from a 3D character platformer that harkens back to a late-90's aesthetic, there's not much of a story. There's mostly just a set-up for you to collect macguffins
- Given the cartoonish visuals, you'd be correct in assuming that the vibes are laid-back and silly. There's nothing serious going on in this game

Playability & Replayability
- Like Banjo-Kazooie, this game leans heavily on collectathon mechanics. While I appreciate that those often motivate exploration, it always devolves into tedium
- You'll be seeking out these collectables, particularly "pagies", throughout 5 sprawling environments and the similarly large overworld that connects them
- You'll also be fighting the camera every step of the way. It has an annoying habit of getting stuck on level geometry outside your field of view, frequently resulting in falling off of platforms and getting hit by enemies
- That said, the level design and puzzles are frequently impressive. You can see that a lot of love and labor went into those
- There's a surprisingly large number of skills you'll have to learn and utilize carefully to traverse each environment and defeat each boss
- Speaking of bosses, there's 6 in total. Unfortunately, there's a noticeable difficulty spike after the third one. The last 3 are honestly brutal for various reasons (perspective, controls, and duration)
- To unlock the final boss, you'll have to collect 100 pagies. Don't hesitate to go back to older worlds once you unlock all the skills. There are some pretty easy ones to be had that make reaching that total only slightly annoying

Overall Impressions & Performance
- My wife was interested in playing this one since she thought it looked cute, so we passed the controller back and forth between pagies. It was pretty fun at first, but it really began to drag during the 4th world
- The game ran exceptionally well and there weren't any notable bugs, but note that it's not impossible to get stuck in small crevices in level geometry. Just pause and return to the hub if this happens

Final Verdict
- 6.5/10. Soft recommend. I largely found collecting things to be a chore. Exploration doesn't feel good when you're constantly battling the camera and already know that you're just going to find the same damn collectable at end of any given path. Still, the quality is evident in the visuals, sounds, puzzles, and level design. I don't have any specific nostalgia for Banjo-Kazooie outside of the music, so maybe I'm viewing the game through the wrong lens

Probably my ultimate "well *I* liked it" game, I bought this game for the Switch during a sale for a bit of a laugh and ended up falling in love with the game. I will admit that this partially has to do with the fact that my childhood involved Donkey Kong 64 and Banjo-Tooie and so I'm just acclimatized to that kind of sprawling level design with the frustrating challenges and partially to do with the fact that I bought it after they released those QOL patches, but this game honestly hits the right notes of nostalgia and so I 100%ed this game. It's like a portable DK64 and I'm just that kind of weirdo that still likes DK64.
The sequel's WAY better though.

Quando eu era criança eu tinha certeza de que viveria da minha escrita. Eu vivia escrevendo, no computador, em blogs, em caderninhos que eu levava debaixo do braço. Era um conforto saber naquela época que eu tinha descoberto algo que eu fazia bem, que era especial em mim. Eu sentia que sabia quem eu era por isso e era bom.

Crescer, conhecer outras pessoas, entrar na faculdade foi perceber que o mundo era muito maior do que eu estava acostumado, e nesse novo mundo, eu não era assim tão bom com a escrita. Muita gente escreve, muita gente se acha especial, muita gente é boa nisso e aquela sensação de que eu tinha um dom se estilhaçou em inúmeros pedaços.

A verdade é que nada do que eu tinha feito até então significava alguma coisa. Os textos, as postagens, os elogios de professores(as) e amigos. Esse é o mundo dos adultos e você não ganha um passe livre por achar que tinha um talento quando criança.

Essa sensação é muito parecida com o que eu senti jogando Yooka-Laylee. Você fez algo muito legal no passado, recebeu muitos elogios, pessoas falavam para você que você tinha um dom para a coisa. Mas você não recebe um passe livre por isso. Existem um monte de outros jogos que fazem tudo o que você quer fazer e fazem melhor ainda.

Eu queria gostar desse jogo, queria ver nele algo especial, dizer que apesar dos defeitos é um grande feito de desenvolvedores com um notável talento. Assim como eu gostaria que eu fosse redescoberto, que as pessoas voltassem a me fazer acreditar que tinha algo de especial acontecendo comigo. Mas, assim como eu, Yooka-Laylee é somente uma sombra do seu passado, cheio de comemorações e promessas de sucesso e, infelizmente, eu não vou insistir para saber o final dessa história.

Yooka Laylee
Helmed by former Rare crew, the developer Playtonic crowdfunded the game as a spiritual successor to Banjo Kazooie

Once the game released-reception was mixed

Having played it twice, I can see the critiques, but I had a lot of fun with it

Let’s begin with the good-Yooka and Laylee control really well, they’re fast and snappy compared to the admittedly very slow and bulky Banjo and Kazooie

Their moveset is based around their lizard-bat combination, Yooka can eat plants with his tongue for temporary power-ups, and later use it as a grappling hook

He can throw Laylee into the air to propel them off the ground

He can bounce with his tail

Double jump, hover and spin

Yooka can roll into a ball that Laylee rolls on

Laylee’s abilities focus on echoing powers-she can reveal invisible platforms and stun enemies with a shriek

One thing I love about the platforming is how the game lets you climb anything-every rock ledge has collision detection

Upgrades are gained by collecting quills and spending them on moves taught by Trowzer the snake-one of many NPCs who appear in each level

Others include Kartos the minecart, Rextro the retro dinosaur, Dr Puzz, and Vendi the vending machine

There are also the Ghostwriters-the equivalent of Banjo’s Jinjos-who are caught in different ways

The graphics are fantastic-colourful huge levels that manage to be easy to traverse, you’ll rarely lose track of where everything is

I’m incredibly surprised at how uncompromised the Switch port is-little in the way of visual sacrifices, the game still runs well aside from a few stutters, it’s impressive

There are a lot of neat ideas-a giant casino level, galactic pirates, even a dungeon at one point that pays homage to Rare’s early title Knight Lore

The game uses the same captioned gibberish as Banjo, as well as Grant Kirkhope returning for the soundtrack

Now what about things that aren’t quite good?

Let’s break down the gameplay-Pagies are collected to unlock new levels and expand old ones

The game’s jiggy equivalent-pagies are found by completing various objectives-which arises one of the game’s core issues-it matches Banjo too close with many of the objectives being mediocre minigames

Minecarts, races, awkward puzzles, timed challenges, slide rooms, they aren’t that great

But I will say this-you more often than not can just go find an easier or more fun Pagie to collect, and the levels are still fun to explore

Also-a number of challenges can actually be cheesed by coming back later with the flight ability

Enemies can be pretty annoying, Rextro’s minigames are very meh, the minecart sections are awkward but simple score challenges

The transformations from Banjo Kazooie are included-I like how they incorporate both characters this time, but they’re mixed

The plant is just use for one Pagie really, Snowplow and Pirate Ship are used to clear rubble throughout the stage, which is fine, the Piranhas are cool, and then there’s the Helicopter, which is awesome

There’s a lot of neat stuff in Yooka Laylee-I won’t deny its inconsistency, there was more they could have done with a modern Banjo Kazooie, but it’s still an enjoyable time

If i had to bet which one would be better while this and A hat in Time were being made. I would bet on this. I would have also lost money, but I also never bet.

Giant worlds with a whole lot of empty space and they just keep getting bigger, in a bad way. It in general has a very janky feel to the whole thing. Its pretty and the movement feels fine for the most part, but the challenges are just sort of plopped in.

This feels like the end point of the banjo kazooie games in a bad way, giant massive empty feeling levels. The pacing is glacier slow with it being expected to leave worlds and come back several times and slowly fly around the worlds later on.
A real disappointment. Not Mighty No. 9 bad but still pretty bad.
4/10