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[Yooka-Laylee] Released! Get your N64-era platformer fix here! (PC, PS4, XB1, Switch)
urahonky
Cynical Old ManRegistered User regular
Cynical Old ManRegistered User regular
Yooka-Laylee is out now!
After being 100% funded on Kickstarter, after 45 minutes, the spiritual successor to Banjo Kazooie has finally arrived. The game was developed by Playtonic, which consists of a lot of former Rare employees that worked on the beloved N64 era platformers.
Why don't we discuss the game here?
Note: I will be updating this OP throughout the day. Sorry for the anemic information so far.
urahonky on
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I've read complaints about the camera issues, but there was a day 1 patch for the game on Steam that fixed whatever issues there were. I'm not sure if it's out on the PS4 yet.
Twitch: KoopahTroopah - Steam: Koopah
Let's Plays of Japanese Games
So I dunno... It's not great, and it's not terrible. The game is a little better than average, IMO.
Pro's
-100% Nails the BK aesthetic. Music, sound and visuals look like they could have been used in Banjo-Kazooie 3 with no changes.
-Music, sound and visuals are also pretty good
-Controls are great
-Replicates the N64-style collect-a-thon platformer to a T.
Cons
-Camera is kinda fucked. Not a deal-breaker for me, but it's definitely wonky enough to be intrusive.
-It's a smaller game for whatever reason (budget, team size, who knows) so instead of having like 100 jiggies and 1000 musical notes spread out accross 9-10 worlds, you have 120 pagies and like 1000+ quills spread out among six worlds. You can expand five of those into bigger worlds, but they still have the same art design and whatnot, and the same collectible counter. It makes the levels feel too big, IMO.
-This is just my own damage, but it runs so close to the BK aesthetic and mechanics that you can't help but compare them directly, and man, it just doesn't quit hit the same level of iconicness as those original Rare characters. Maybe they'll grow on me though.
Overall, I'm super happy with it so far. I was probably predisposed to like it though, given I was willing to kickstart it.
There's a tonic you can easily get in that area that makes the meter drain much slower when you're using the ball move. Also, you only need to grab like two butterflies to win that race. Remember to jump up ramps and take corners aggressively.
Also it looks like the arcade games will not be able to be beaten completely with keyboard+mouse due to 4-way directional input rather than an analog stick.
I also managed to accidentally skip the basic movement tutorial by double-jump attacking over the slippery speedbump thing in that area.
Couldn't figure out how to crouch after that.
Twitch: KoopahTroopah - Steam: Koopah
Also - how does the main game co-op work? Player 2 just gets a cursor? Do they just pick up quills or something? We couldn't figure it out.
I'm about 10 hours into the single player though and still on the (now expanded) ice world. It's pretty fun. Exactly the kind of nostalgia hit I was expecting. Camera does need work though, it's especially noticeable going from BOTW to this.
You can apparently dive straight out of the gate too :rotate:
One major difference between this and Banjo-Kazooie is that they basically ripped a lot of the consumable item collection out. Powers are fueled by a power bar instead of feathers, or are temporary buffs gotten from static locations. (Berry bushes, bee hives etc.). This means there's a LOT less shit to collect, and while you have situations where the nearby powerup spells out what you need to do in an encounter, you never have to worry about running out of, say, ice eggs at a critical juncture.
Anywho, the crazy thing about this is once you get the flying power; you can whip that bad boy out anywhere (aside from swimming). It'll drain your power bar a bit fast, but so long as you land, you just need to wait like 10 seconds for it to refill. It's kinda nuts, actually, and actually let's you break all sorts of challenges that you may or may not have already done.
Found an area in the expanded Ice Level that was just nuts.
Gotten annoyed at one or two challenges that just seem unfun (I'm looking at you Rextro) but overall I'm having a damned good time with this thing.
A quick head's up: You get a pagie for collecting 200 quills in a level. I didn't realize this and spent like 20-30 minutes looking for the last challenge.
It really does a good job of feeding the nostalgic play while introducing modern polish. Would love more of these kinds of games.
Also the arcade games continue to disappoint.
Still having a good time though.
Lost my patience, so I found hints for two jiggies and flat out had the game get bugged on me so I missed three otherwise obvious quills and had to just find a guide for them.
The levels are just too damn big; it makes hunting for collectibles a fucking chore after a point. I'd hate to imagine what it'd be like if you couldn't just fly whenever you wanted). I feel like they could have split up these 25 pagies per world, drop the least fun ones and re contextualize them for 10 pagies for 8-9 worlds and it would have felt much better.
The final boss fight is pretty long, and they don't give you any health during it like in the previous games. Kind of annoying.
Also, end-game spoiler stuff
This game is going for being a Banjo-Kazooie successor, but it doesn't live up to it's predecessor in several areas and doesn't do a lot to exceed it in others.
If I had to name any complaints it's that I dislike that you have to do Rextro's arcade games twice, even if you get the high score the first time already and that some puzzles seem very obtuse and use mechanics that are never explained.
All in all, as a fan of 3d platformers, I find it a joy to play though.
Unless you are using a keyboard. Then it's murder.
And there's no point getting the power-ups as far as I could tell.
This game is so thoroughly intended to be played with a controller that I am surprised that Keyboard + Mouse is even an option, and if you are playing it with a Keyboard + Mouse, I think you might be missing the point of the game.
I understand not everybody has the luxury of hooking up a controller to their PC, but...yeah.
Let's Plays of Japanese Games
The keyboard and mouse combo was okay for most of the first level, aside the obvious binding issues.
But yeah, that first Rextro game needed an analogue stick to play, as the four directional input of the keyboard and the turning lag time of the cart made it impossible to take the shortcut, as your cart would turn way too wide regardless of what you did.
Funnily enough, having a keyboard also broke the same Rextro game to a certain extent, as there is a horizontal line you can take in the top left section between the two lanes of fire traps where the fire traps will not hit you.
With a keyboard, it is trivially easy to line this up and sneak between the two lanes.
But that's the keyboards only advantage here; going in a straight line.
I also found that a keyboard worked better with Kartos.
My controller seemed to be really sensitive when breaking, so Kartos would break multiple times in succession if I didn't take some serious effort to recenter the control stick.
In any case, I was very happy that I had connected a controller up to my PC last Christmas, to try and enable split-screen multiplayer, otherwise the keyboard binding issues would have killed this game for me.
To a large extent though, I can play most games with keyboard+mouse, with this Rextro game being the only exception.
Like I've happily played Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 on keyboard+mouse, although it does take some acclimatising.
So if the keyboard bindings, and this Rextro game's controls in general, had been less bad, I would have happily played this game on keyboard+mouse.
I should perhaps see if changing input method makes the final boss easier
Probably not. Not enough binds I guess.
Ehhhh... I'd say don't release your game on PC if it isn't going to control well on that platform's default control scheme.
I'd say anyone who backed a BK revival but had no intention of using an analog stick to play it is being a silly goose. "What do you mean I have to use the control scheme it was designed for for the most consistent experience??"
I'm not sure why we'd assume it would be designed solely for controller when it's being released for PC?
And I'm not sure how you gauge the quality of the different controls from a kickstarter when the game's not built yet?
I had assumed it would be functional with a keyboard+mouse at the very least.
Just like I had assumed the game would be play-tested.
So no u
I don't think it's unreasonable to expect a game on PC to control well on KBaM.
Perhaps but lots of games that are clearly better on a Controller get PC releases. Most Platformers, non FPS action games and racing games come to mind.
I do not have a bad time.
Are these 2d or 3d games? I would like to see someone play say... BK with a keyboard and have a good time. And since this was EXPLICITLY meant to be BK... again, you should have that expectation. This isn't like Ratchet & Clank where it's a third person shooter where you jump a lot. It's a game about carefully moving around 3 dimensional space...
They could have easily just scrubbed KBAM and made the game 100% controller only. They'd have to deal with that separate can of worms, but they would be insulated from this specific complaint. They didn't, and chose to support KBAM. So any issues somebody has with it being unusable are perfectly valid and not their fault.
I'm not victim blaming. At all. But you have to kinda understand that KBAM isn't going to be the best for every type of game.