One of my favorite video games of all-time is Super Mario Sunshine, the GameCube-exclusive Mario game that was as popular as it was divisive. The same goes for a lot of the old collect-a-thon platformers of the late 90s and early ‘aughts, such as Banjo-Kazooie or Jak & Daxter. But times change, as do consumers’ tastes.
By the 2010s, platformers had largely been relegated to a niche among niches. Still, nostalgia is a weird beast. That was proven true in 2014, when a bunch of Rare alumni banded together to create a spiritual successor to those platformers of yore, with one of the most successful Kickstarter campaigns ever. The game, called Yooka-Laylee, quickly garnered the eyes of industry veterans and newbies alike.
The full game released in 2017. It was okay. Now nearly a decade later, a remaster called Yooka-Replaylee has been released, hoping to fix all of the issues the original had. Does it make the game any better?
Maybe.
What Is It?
He doesn’t offer moves anymore, but he does give you some serious upgrades.
Yooka-Replaylee is a top-to-bottom remaster of the 2017 indie platformer Yooka-Laylee, itself the product of Playtonic Games (made up of Rare veterans who worked on many of the collectathon platformers that made that company famous) and an enormous number of financial backers who helped to make it one of the most successful crowd-funding campaigns in history. The original game was divisive, to say the least, with several technical issues and a sense of unoriginality that hampered the title. Now, eight years later, we have this re-release that fixes most of the original issues.
The game’s story is as whimsical and simplistic as its nostalgic forbears: You play the duo of Yooka (a chameleon) and Laylee (a fruit bat), who live on an old ship wreck. Both are seasoned adventurers and treasure hunters who have come across a living book called the One Book, whose magic pages modify material reality due to whatever is written in it. One day, a grubby corporate CEO bee named Capital B (this game isn’t exactly subtle) and his Vice President Dr. Quack (a duck’s head kept alive in a jar) decide to capture the One Book by activating a machine that sucks up every book in the land, tearing out all of the One Book’s pages (or ‘pagies’) in the process. Sensing a new adventure, Yooka and Laylee set out for the headquarters of the Hivory Towers corporation to retrieve the pages and confront Capital B once and for all.
Why Should I Care?
They aren’t kidding about the improved graphics.
If you grew up playing Rare platformers, you know the drill here: you navigate a large hub world (in this case Hivory Towers), within which are entrances to various worlds (in this case located inside giant books). Within each world are various challenges and puzzles that reward you with collectables (in this case pages of the One Book, or ‘pagies’), which in turn are used to unlock more parts of the hub world, which in turn allow access to new worlds.
But those are the basics, and you probably already know them. What is actually different this time?
Outside of the graphical upgrades and redone cutscenes, there are a handful of major changes. The big one has to do with gameplay itself: in the original release, the player slowly learned new moves by spending ‘quills’ (literally colored feathers) found throughout the game which were then in turned spent to access said moves. In this new version, all moves are immediately accessible from the beginning. This is one of a number of quality of life upgrades, which also include a fast travel system, a new map that tracks objectives, and a good deal of rebalancing tweaks to various puzzles and boss encounters. The collectibles have also been increased; there are now three hundred pagies to find in this game, nearly double the original release’s.
There are also other significant differences. That story I mentioned earlier? In the original it was even more simplistic and nonsensical, while now it actually makes sense. Old collectibles have been given new uses, from purchasing cosmetic upgrades to game-altering tonics. New enemy types and minigames are now scattered around the various levels, and most if not all of the original soundtrack has been re-recorded. All in all, this re-release gives the original a much-needed fresh coat of paint, and it shows.
What Makes It Worth My Time And Money?
Why yes, I too enjoyed Treasure Planet.
So that begs the question: Is the game better now? The answer is yes, more or less.
The problems with the original release did not just stem from the technical issues, it was also its slavish devotion to nostalgia, for better or worse. Playtonic wanted to create a spiritual successor to Banjo-Kazooie, and that’s exactly what they did, warts and all. The problem was that it was so successful in that regard that it ultimately came off as terribly derivative and unoriginal, even mimicking some of the issues those old games had (especially the terrible camera angles).
Comparing this to the original, this is definitely a significant improvement in both a technical and story sense. But in comparison to more recent platformer successes (like Astro Bot), it still carries the baggage of its original. It’s not really the mediocrity of Super Lucky’s Tale, mind you, and is in fact actually fun and compelling to play, but it lacks the sense of wonder that those old games to create. The various worlds themselves still feel kind of generic, even with the redesigns (ice level, swamp level, vague space pirate level, you get the idea), and yet somehow are also incredibly convoluted and hard to traverse (hence the map).
Yeah, it’s a fun game, and if you like old-school collectathon platformers, then you’re going to like this. Whether or not it holds up to your old memories is something that’s totally up to you.
Nostalgia is a weird beast. One of my favorite video games of all-time is Super Mario Sunshine, the GameCube-exclusive Mario game that was as popular as it was divisive. The same goes for a lot of the old collect-a-thon platformers…
One of my favorite video games of all-time is Super Mario Sunshine, the GameCube-exclusive Mario game that was as popular as it was divisive. The same goes for a lot of the old collect-a-thon platformers of the late 90s and early ‘aughts, such as Banjo-Kazooie or Jak & Daxter. But times change, as do consumers’ tastes.
By the 2010s, platformers had largely been relegated to a niche among niches. Still, nostalgia is a weird beast. That was proven true in 2014, when a bunch of Rare alumni banded together to create a spiritual successor to those platformers of yore, with one of the most successful Kickstarter campaigns ever. The game, called Yooka-Laylee, quickly garnered the eyes of industry veterans and newbies alike.
The full game released in 2017. It was okay. Now nearly a decade later, a remaster called Yooka-Replaylee has been released, hoping to fix all of the issues the original had. Does it make the game any better?
Maybe.
What Is It?
He doesn’t offer moves anymore, but he does give you some serious upgrades.
Yooka-Replaylee is a top-to-bottom remaster of the 2017 indie platformer Yooka-Laylee, itself the product of Playtonic Games (made up of Rare veterans who worked on many of the collectathon platformers that made that company famous) and an enormous number of financial backers who helped to make it one of the most successful crowd-funding campaigns in history. The original game was divisive, to say the least, with several technical issues and a sense of unoriginality that hampered the title. Now, eight years later, we have this re-release that fixes most of the original issues.
The game’s story is as whimsical and simplistic as its nostalgic forbears: You play the duo of Yooka (a chameleon) and Laylee (a fruit bat), who live on an old ship wreck. Both are seasoned adventurers and treasure hunters who have come across a living book called the One Book, whose magic pages modify material reality due to whatever is written in it. One day, a grubby corporate CEO bee named Capital B (this game isn’t exactly subtle) and his Vice President Dr. Quack (a duck’s head kept alive in a jar) decide to capture the One Book by activating a machine that sucks up every book in the land, tearing out all of the One Book’s pages (or ‘pagies’) in the process. Sensing a new adventure, Yooka and Laylee set out for the headquarters of the Hivory Towers corporation to retrieve the pages and confront Capital B once and for all.
Why Should I Care?
They aren’t kidding about the improved graphics.
If you grew up playing Rare platformers, you know the drill here: you navigate a large hub world (in this case Hivory Towers), within which are entrances to various worlds (in this case located inside giant books). Within each world are various challenges and puzzles that reward you with collectables (in this case pages of the One Book, or ‘pagies’), which in turn are used to unlock more parts of the hub world, which in turn allow access to new worlds.
But those are the basics, and you probably already know them. What is actually different this time?
Outside of the graphical upgrades and redone cutscenes, there are a handful of major changes. The big one has to do with gameplay itself: in the original release, the player slowly learned new moves by spending ‘quills’ (literally colored feathers) found throughout the game which were then in turned spent to access said moves. In this new version, all moves are immediately accessible from the beginning. This is one of a number of quality of life upgrades, which also include a fast travel system, a new map that tracks objectives, and a good deal of rebalancing tweaks to various puzzles and boss encounters. The collectibles have also been increased; there are now three hundred pagies to find in this game, nearly double the original release’s.
There are also other significant differences. That story I mentioned earlier? In the original it was even more simplistic and nonsensical, while now it actually makes sense. Old collectibles have been given new uses, from purchasing cosmetic upgrades to game-altering tonics. New enemy types and minigames are now scattered around the various levels, and most if not all of the original soundtrack has been re-recorded. All in all, this re-release gives the original a much-needed fresh coat of paint, and it shows.
What Makes It Worth My Time And Money?
Why yes, I too enjoyed Treasure Planet.
So that begs the question: Is the game better now? The answer is yes, more or less.
The problems with the original release did not just stem from the technical issues, it was also its slavish devotion to nostalgia, for better or worse. Playtonic wanted to create a spiritual successor to Banjo-Kazooie, and that’s exactly what they did, warts and all. The problem was that it was so successful in that regard that it ultimately came off as terribly derivative and unoriginal, even mimicking some of the issues those old games had (especially the terrible camera angles).
Comparing this to the original, this is definitely a significant improvement in both a technical and story sense. But in comparison to more recent platformer successes (like Astro Bot), it still carries the baggage of its original. It’s not really the mediocrity of Super Lucky’s Tale, mind you, and is in fact actually fun and compelling to play, but it lacks the sense of wonder that those old games to create. The various worlds themselves still feel kind of generic, even with the redesigns (ice level, swamp level, vague space pirate level, you get the idea), and yet somehow are also incredibly convoluted and hard to traverse (hence the map).
Yeah, it’s a fun game, and if you like old-school collectathon platformers, then you’re going to like this. Whether or not it holds up to your old memories is something that’s totally up to you.
by Brandon Perkins
