A group of former Rare employees formed Playtonic Games, and begun work on Banjo Kazooie-tribute Yooka Laylee. Everything here is from the same template. It's a 3D collectathon platformer, with bright, colourful graphics, and Yooka and Laylee work as one unit to navigate the environment.
Laylee the bat clings onto Yooka the chameleon. Their abilities are unlocked as you progress through the game, with 2 abilities available to purchase in each world from Trowzer the Snake. There's all kinds of abilities: a spring jump, glide, roll (to navigate slopes), dash, lick certain objects to inherit their properties (sticky honey, heavy cannonball), sonar, invisibility, fly. I like the look of Yooka and Laylee. I think they have done a good job of recreating the partnership of Banjo and Kazooie.
The story is basic - involving the evil Capital B and his side-kick Dr. Quack planning to steal the world's books to monopolise sales. When stealing Laylee's book, the “Pagies” are scattered, which you then go on a journey to reclaim.
The speech is just nonsense every syllable. This instantly becomes annoying. Luckily there is an option to reduce it just to the start of a sentence. I know it is pastiche of Banjo Kazooie, but it would have been a much better idea to use real language. The soundtrack is good though, created by Grant Kirkhope, David Wise and Steve Burke.
The Pagies are used to unlock worlds, and expand existing worlds, giving more opportunities for more Pagies. There are Quills to collect which you need to unlock the new moves. The Quills are often positioned to guide you around the environments; they highlights areas where you haven't explored.
There's a few Ghost Writer characters to find, an item that expands your power gauge, an item that expands your health meter, a Play Token to play Retro's Arcade Machine.
In each world, Retro lets you play a different game. You play the game once to gain a Pagie, and play again to beat the high-score to gain another Pagie. Even if you beat the high score the first time around, you still have to play again which is a little annoying.
A few characters give you quests. These can vary such as races, fetch quest, fly through hoops, reach an area without touching the ground, puzzles, move a ball to a hole etc. There's a mine-cart level which I presume is a nod to Donkey Kong Country. You constantly move forward, and can jump in order to dodge enemies and collect the gems.
The levels can be quite large and I think a map, even a simple one – would have helped nicely. I thought it wasn't clear when you should move on. You definitely have to revisit levels when you have the required ability, but sometimes I did wonder if I should be able to do something or if it was something I could ignore for now.
When you get the flying ability, some of the challenges are a little easy. The flying is (I assume) intentionally clunky, but you can cover large distances and reach large heights with it; bypassing many tricky platforms and making some challenges a “walk in the park”.
A common complaint seems to be about the camera. This must have been fixed since launch, since I thought it was perfectly fine.
To reach new parts of the Hub World, you need to pass a quiz. You may be asked about how many collectables you have, total play time, recognise characters or locations. This is also a nod to Banjo Kazooie.
This style of game has fallen out of favour over the years, and it's nice that Playtonic Games have tried to rekindle people's appreciation of the genre. I reckon I would have preferred more numerous but smaller, concise worlds. I did feel a sense of nostalgia playing this, but I felt I would have enjoyed the game more if I was younger.