Yooka-Laylee

 Xbox One
User Score
5.5

Mixed or average reviews- based on 129 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 62 out of 129
  2. Mixed: 17 out of 129
  3. Negative: 50 out of 129
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  1. ooo77
    Apr 14, 2017
    0
    This game isn't trying to revive 3D platformers, it's just copying banjo kazooie so that they can get money from everyone who played it as a kid. The camera is awful, the lever design is bad, and it has horrible frame rate issues. Skip this and play banjo kazooie for a good platformer similar to this, or the newest Mario game for a modern one
  2. DavidJS
    Apr 14, 2017
    3
    Yooka-Laylee, dubbed the spiritual successor to Banjo-Kazooie, is a platforming game and the first game developed by new studio Playtonic Games, who are partly comprised of ex-Rare employees. The game aims to recreate some of the magic that old platformers of the past managed to achieve, while also innovating and providing some new experiences.

    Yooka-Laylee has gone some way in    Yooka-Laylee, dubbed the spiritual successor to Banjo-Kazooie, is a platforming game and the first game developed by new studio Playtonic Games, who are partly comprised of ex-Rare employees. The game aims to recreate some of the magic that old platformers of the past managed to achieve, while also innovating and providing some new experiences.

    Yooka-Laylee has gone some way in achieving this. The game is colorful, the dialogue contains some wit and humor, there are some good character designs, the controls are decent and the various sounds when picking up collectibles or unlocking something give you that happy burst of excitement. A feeling you may be familiar with when having collected a jiggy in the Banjo games for example.

    While Yooka-Laylee shows sparks of potential, it never quite delivers. The game's biggest problem is its level designs. The levels are big, confusing, lack a distinct feature and feel haphazardly put together. It feels like things were dumped or added there bit by bit, each time a new pagie needed to be put into the game and the levels don't feel unified or memorable. You will find yourself backtracking and visiting places you have already visited multiple times, often by accident as you struggle to navigate your way around the level or forget where certain things are due to the levels poor design. Before long you get fed up of searching for things to do and revisiting the same place again and again.

    The game's music, while technically sound, isn't as exciting or memorable as that from games of the past. Grant Kirkhope, who wrote the music for Banjo-Kazooie, writes most of Yooka-Laylee's music. For the level and hub music, Kirkhope has gone for a more ambient style, which doesn't live up to the more melodic and upbeat music he wrote for past games. While you could argue the music fits the big, uninspired levels, it is still boring and not anywhere near as good as his work on games such as Banjo-Kazooie.

    The transformations that you can do on each level are extremely boring and feel rushed. They may as well not be in the game and I feel that this is a huge opportunity wasted for creating some exciting and meaningful transformations. The moves that you can learn throughout the game start off feeling purposeful, but towards the end of the game feel forced in just to fill content and tick boxes.

    I did not find the camera or the character voices to be an issue, something that many people are mentioning. With that said, they are not done as well as games of the past.

    Overall, Yooka-Laylee is not a terrible game, but it is also not a good game. I would consider it average at best. What the game does well, such as certain character designs, sound effects, witty dialogue and attractive menus, it can only match at best to older games it is inspired by. The game is let down mostly by the poor level designs, that often leave the gamer feeling frustrated, bored and lost. The game also suffers from rather boring music, pointless and dull transformations and learn-able moves that by the end feel forced into the game just to fill content. Many aspects of the game feel haphazardly put together and the game lacks overall polish.

    I wouldn't recommend buying this game at full price, although fans of the old games this game was inspired by may want to pick this game up in a sale. Being a fan and a player of such games myself and a Kickstarter backer of this game, I was left disappointed by Yooka-Laylee.    … Expand
  3. unknownhero
    Apr 14, 2017
    4
    Edit: With constant frame rate drops and unresponsive controls, I'm lowering my score to a 4. It makes already unbalanced mini games impossible, especially to get the 'high score' pagies. I found myself about to get the high score on the arcade mini games only to have the game jump suddenly, screw me up and have to start again. What pains me more is there's no 'retry' button on the pauseEdit: With constant frame rate drops and unresponsive controls, I'm lowering my score to a 4. It makes already unbalanced mini games impossible, especially to get the 'high score' pagies. I found myself about to get the high score on the arcade mini games only to have the game jump suddenly, screw me up and have to start again. What pains me more is there's no 'retry' button on the pause menu, meaning having to go out of mini game, read the same irritating dialogue again and again and restart the game for it to happen again.

    I signed up to Metacritic just to review this. I've been waiting (unknowingly) for this game pretty much since finishing Banjo-Tooie when it came out on the N64 - "Just you wait 'til Banjo-Threeie!'. I have to say, I am a little bit disappointed with it. It looks nice with vibrant colours and nice textures, exactly what you'd expect from a graphical upgrade. The music is also really nice and features the same sort of BK/BT sound effects for NPC's and upgrades. The characters are also quite funny at times, however, a lot of the jokes seem to miss the mark by trying to be 'down with the kids', in a sense.

    This game, however, does fall short in several place; the levels are far too big with very little direction or guidance. I get that this is all part of the adventure, running around and what not, but it leaves it feeling very empty. It can be very easy to miss a tiny crack in a wall or whatever and just spend half an hour wandering around bored. I bet this is why Nuts and Bolts added vehicles and obvious challenges to try and avoid this (I can't believe I'm justifying N&B) - just to break up the boring emptiness.

    BK worked in the sense that the smaller levels and reduced number of things to collect meant that this wasn't too strenuous a task. However, instead of 100 notes and 10 jiggies, it's now 200 'quills' and 25 'pagies'. As an adult now, I'm finding it really difficult to find the motivation to spend so much time exploring every nook and cranny to find that 1 quill hidden in some ambiguous crevice. You now have to spend pagies to 'expand' the level to make it bigger to get everything, so before this you're exploring what looks like a half designed level!

    I suppose you could argue that this game isn't for adults (it is VERY hand holdy to start with), however, with some of the adult jokes the kids would miss ('The Bat Ship Crazy', or a snake named 'Trowser' anyone?) along with the obvious n64 BK/BT references in there, this game was clearly intended for old fans as well as new. I also keep seeing things around and being like 'oh, that's just the Yooka-Laylee equivalent of X or Y thing in Banjo; I get that it's a spiritual successor but nothing seems very original at all. The new power ups just feel more like ticking boxes than anything fun - 'this puzzle is solved by shooting this thing into that thing as it's places right next to it'.

    The camera is absolutely dreadful, whereas BK games would just let you control it and platform as you please, YL insists that on certain parts that it'll swing around willy-nilly and lock into place, making the (dull) combat and platforming more difficult than it should be. I'm all for challenge, but not created by technical limitation. I also can't stand the equivalent of the 'talon trot', where Laylee jumps on Yooka and runs on him as a ball; it just simply doesn't turn properly making going around corners a nightmare and resulting in you plummeting off of high ledges and needing to climb everything all again.

    The enemies are completely boring, there are about three different re-skinned enemies you see throughout the game's worlds. They have absolutely no unique personality or charm and can easily be killed by just running up and spinning at them. It makes everything very unchallenged and tedious. Even the BK enemies were relevant to the theme of each level and had unique designs and attacks.

    A lot of the puzzles are far too convoluted also, I've experienced incidences where I've thought I had the right answer straight away, but it didn't work. Then I'd look up a guide when stumped and it would tell me that I did have it right to begin with, but you just have to do the same thing multiple times - that's just bad game development. There was another puzzle where you'd have to do a certain thing to a very certain spot, otherwise you can't progress. However, the spot is just like any other and there would be no way of telling unless you just happened to do it by accident - it's a bit like the secret shine sprites randomly placed in Mario Sunshine.

    It actually breaks my heart only giving this game a 5, I had such high hopes for it after waiting for so long. I like the direction they tried to go with it, but it just seems uninspired from how groundbreaking old games were. It certainly isn't bad if you have a lot of time on your hands; as well as not costing £50 like most triple-A games recently    … Expand
  4. fykins
    Apr 25, 2017
    0
    This game is not worthy of being mentioned in the same sentence as banjo kazooie. There are just so many reasons not to get this game, just another early access game that turned to trash. Oh sure they took your money upfront and that's exactly why they don't need to deliver at launch time.
  5. Digitalhero
    Apr 11, 2017
    0
    Uninspiring and unoriginal.

    Some things just need to stay in the past. This is one of those things.

    There are other games that are better worth your 40$. Wait till this game goes at least half off.
  6. njja02
    May 15, 2018
    3
    A terribly controlled an charmless adventure that frustrated me so much. It looks nice and there are some cool sections throughout each of the worlds. But overall it was a slog.
  7. Broyax
    Apr 4, 2020
    0
    Beuaaarrrgh... quelle horreur, ce truc en 16 couleurs avec surtout du vert, duvert et du verdâtre... on se croirait presque dans le sale truc à **** kévins, Fortnite ! des graphismes pour des gamins de CE2 en somme !

    On dirait clairement un jeu comme les daubes à Nintendaube ou les daubes de Rage Software et leurs univers gogols à n'en plus pouvoir, niaiserie et stupidité réunies pour    Beuaaarrrgh... quelle horreur, ce truc en 16 couleurs avec surtout du vert, duvert et du verdâtre... on se croirait presque dans le sale truc à **** kévins, Fortnite ! des graphismes pour des gamins de CE2 en somme !

    On dirait clairement un jeu comme les daubes à Nintendaube ou les daubes de Rage Software et leurs univers gogols à n'en plus pouvoir, niaiserie et stupidité réunies pour les gniards un brin simplets, les moutards un peu "retard" comme disent les Anglais et enfin pour les adulescents qui n'ont pas grandi et sont restés coincés entre les deux .

    En tout cas, il faut sauter dans ce sous-jeu de trisomongols 21, il faut sauter ! c'est un sale jeu de plate-formes à golmons ! alors,viens par ici, petit, petit, oui c'est bien, avance encore un peu... le broyeur est juste là. Maintenant, aie la bonté et la politesse de tomber dedans, tu seras broyé en un instant, vermine d'étron indé !    … Expand

Awards & Rankings

30
#30 Most Discussed Xbox One Game of 2017
24
#24 Most Shared Xbox One Game of 2017

Critic Reviews

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Metascore
73

Mixed or average reviews - based on 39 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 24 out of 39
  2. Mixed: 14 out of 39
  3. Negative: 1 out of 39
  1. Official Xbox Magazine UK
    May 29, 2017
    70
    Wickedly funny and not afraid to make you work, Yooka-Laylee is diabolically fun. [June 2017, p.69]
  2. Worth Playing
    May 12, 2017
    80
    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.
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  3. Windows Central
    Apr 14, 2017
    80
    Hopefully Playtonic continues to support Yooka-Laylee with updates and refinements. But even with a few rough edges here and there, this is still a huge game that platforming fans must not miss.
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