Yooka Laylee and the Impossible Lair is the Donkey Kong Country game we are desperately missing between Nintendo's own offerings. While it borrows a lot of DNA from Tropical Freeze, Impossible Lair's best qualities are uniquely its own.
Coming off the back of its Banjo-Kazooie style 3D platformer, Yooka and Laylee feel way more at home in the 2D style. The movement feels tighter, the script is funnier, and the gameplay suits this version of Retro's history. The levels are broken up into two parts, the classic version and a transformed version, fundamentally altering the level and creating double the amount of content in the game. You change the level type in the overworld map, which is one of the game's two greatest achievements. Playing like a 2D Zelda map, you traverse level to level in a puzzle-filled open world, interfacing with characters, and finding hidden secrets. It's a glorified level select, but it has so much personality that outside of the levels are equally as fun as being in them.
The game's other achievement is the titular Impossible Lair. The game opens taunting a nearly impossible gauntlet of platforming prowess, asking players to defeat the final boss right from the start. You can return to face this challenge at any time, but you can swing the odds ever so slightly in your favor if you beat the levels and collect each of the Bee Warriors, which grant one extra hit per level completed. It's a self-rewarding system that makes 100% completing the game feel not only valuable, but necessary, as the Lair is brutally difficult, requiring mastery of every gameplay mechanic and tight precision skill and endurance. Initially, the Lair was even too difficult upon completing all 40 levels, but Playtonic has since added checkpoints to the final level if you want to ease the tension, which are balanced perfectly and don't dampen the epic challenge awaiting you.
The presentation of the game is always charming and inviting. The soundtrack has a lot of memorable tunes, and the aforementioned overworld has a wide variety of themes and locales. It's a shame that doesn't carry over to the levels themselves, as a lot of them feel like they reuse similar design elements and ideas. Additionally, many of the hidden collectibles are more trouble than they are worth, especially some which are limited to one try per run, or you need to reset, which is unnecessarily punishing.
Yooka Laylee's second outing is a much more riveting experience. Playtonic managed to channel a different element of the platforming genre and still add bold new ideas to keep their iteration as a standout among its contemporaries. If you loved DKC: Returns or Tropical Freeze, this is a must purchase.
Coming off the back of its Banjo-Kazooie style 3D platformer, Yooka and Laylee feel way more at home in the 2D style. The movement feels tighter, the script is funnier, and the gameplay suits this version of Retro's history. The levels are broken up into two parts, the classic version and a transformed version, fundamentally altering the level and creating double the amount of content in the game. You change the level type in the overworld map, which is one of the game's two greatest achievements. Playing like a 2D Zelda map, you traverse level to level in a puzzle-filled open world, interfacing with characters, and finding hidden secrets. It's a glorified level select, but it has so much personality that outside of the levels are equally as fun as being in them.
The game's other achievement is the titular Impossible Lair. The game opens taunting a nearly impossible gauntlet of platforming prowess, asking players to defeat the final boss right from the start. You can return to face this challenge at any time, but you can swing the odds ever so slightly in your favor if you beat the levels and collect each of the Bee Warriors, which grant one extra hit per level completed. It's a self-rewarding system that makes 100% completing the game feel not only valuable, but necessary, as the Lair is brutally difficult, requiring mastery of every gameplay mechanic and tight precision skill and endurance. Initially, the Lair was even too difficult upon completing all 40 levels, but Playtonic has since added checkpoints to the final level if you want to ease the tension, which are balanced perfectly and don't dampen the epic challenge awaiting you.
The presentation of the game is always charming and inviting. The soundtrack has a lot of memorable tunes, and the aforementioned overworld has a wide variety of themes and locales. It's a shame that doesn't carry over to the levels themselves, as a lot of them feel like they reuse similar design elements and ideas. Additionally, many of the hidden collectibles are more trouble than they are worth, especially some which are limited to one try per run, or you need to reset, which is unnecessarily punishing.
Yooka Laylee's second outing is a much more riveting experience. Playtonic managed to channel a different element of the platforming genre and still add bold new ideas to keep their iteration as a standout among its contemporaries. If you loved DKC: Returns or Tropical Freeze, this is a must purchase.