Yooka-Laylee is an open world platformer that follows the adventures of Yooka, an iguana, and Laylee, a bat. Made by former Rare employees, the game is wildly regarded as a spiritual successor to Banjo-Kazooie. The two embark on an epic journey to thwart the villainous Capital B and his devious scheme to absorb all the world’s books. While the game has a lot of personality because of its adorable characters, the lack of a proper story and other technical problems detract from the experience. What should’ve been a true spiritual successor is a good effort but falls slightly short of expectations.
The story revolves around the search for Pagies, special pieces of paper used to unlock new worlds. From what I understood, Capital B, an evil industrialist and his duck doctor, want to restructure the universe. Like many in the genre, the plot is simplistic and is mostly used an excuse to transport the player into new and magical worlds. The more Pagies you collect, the more magical books you unlock. There are plenty of boss fights, arcade games and quiz shows along the way.
Another mechanic which makes Yooka-Laylee unique is the ability to unlock new moves. If you collect enough Quills, the serpent salesman Trowzer will grant you new powers. You start the game with the basic ability to hit enemies, but by the end you become an unstoppable force.
Yooka-Laylee runs at a disappointing 30 FPS on Xbox One and this results in a platformer which feels restricted due to its controls. Jumping and navigating narrow pathways is by far the most challenging because you don’t have the precision you expect from modern games. At times the game feels like it hasn’t progressed since the 1990s. Had the frame rate been 60 FPS, this would’ve tightened up the controls. If you miss one jump, you’ll have to start again from the bottom and none of this is helped by an awkward and seemingly outdated camera system.
The game has witnessed significant improvements since the Toybox Demo though. The Toybox Demo was available to gamers who preordered the title when it initially appeared on the Xbox Store. The Toybox Demo suffered from floaty controls so significant optimization has definitely occurred since then. It’s evident in the controls when you play the two versions one after another. Unfortunately, it’s still not enough. For a game that relies on precision when maneuvering throughout the world the controls and movement of the characters feel inadequate.
One of the most bizarre issues pertains to the sound effects all the creatures in Yooka-Laylee make. In any other game—which doesn’t feature dialogue—the “mumbling” sounds natural…natural in the sense that they’re organic sounds which don’t appear to be repeats of the same short clip. In Yooka-Laylee however, all of the characters sound as though short clips were randomly mashed together over and over again. While this may seem like an odd complaint, it just sounds very strange when you’re playing the game. It comes across as negligent on the part of the developers, not to mention how annoying it is. At times these sounds feel almost unbearable, characters don’t just make cute little sounds to show the player their speaking, rather they bloviate in a manner that makes you want to cover your ears and skip the dialogue entirely.
As expected, comparisons between Yooka-Laylee and Banjo-Kazooie are bound to occur. Yooka-Laylee may be technically superior to the old games, but it doesn’t capture their appeal. Yooka-Laylee seems to be geared towards children because its humor isn’t meant for adults. Banjo-Kazooie appeared to be a title meant for children but it featured some pretty obvious innuendos and visuals. Maybe they were trying to capture the childish wonder of older platforming games, but considering the people who played them are mostly adults, the humor falls short and feels like it’s targeting the wrong audience.
Summary
Overall, Yooka-Laylee is a good game which needs some more technical work on Xbox One. The platforming feels unrefined due to the movement and camera. Despite that, the soundtrack by David Wise and Grant Kirkhope gets stuck in your head and the co-op mode is a lot of fun. Yooka-Laylee is built on an incredibly solid foundation but has some growing up to do.
Reece contributed 13 articles to ICXM between 2016–2017, covering game reviews, Windows and PC, and Xbox news with a focus on hands-on impressions and verified-source reporting. Their bylines on the site span the Xbox One X launch year and Microsoft’s wider Play Anywhere / UWP gaming initiative.