![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Recordkeeping: Yooka-Laylee COMPLETE
Jan. 19th, 2019 07:54 amIn order to enjoy Yooka-Laylee, you have to love late-90s 3D collectathon platformers.
I know that sounds obvious, but: I didn't say "enjoy" late-90s 3D collectathons. I said LOVE them. Warts and all. I mean you have to be okay with a sometimes-shoddy camera, you have to not mind looking at a screen that says you have 199 out of 200 things with no idea where the last one is.
You need to be okay with motivating yourself to do ridiculous things under the expectation that MAYBE this will pay off and get you a reward. You gotta be okay with every character in the game going "YAPNAP BLAPBLAP" instead of having voice acting.
You gotta love to scour a map top to bottom and do it again once you've unlocked new moves later in the game.
You have to look back at the past with unclouded eyes, really LOOK at the flaws and ask yourself, is that what I'm here for?
I can't blame anyone for saying "No, Sqrlmog! What you speak of is Hell, and I have freedom in my heart and joy in my step as I walk away from it!"
I'm not walking away from it, though. I love the genre and I liked Yooka-Laylee a whole dang lot. It is aggressively not flawless, but I knew what I was here for and it delivers what I wanted it to.
I would talk about the plot except nobody cares. The characters sure don't care. They're aware they're in a video game and they do not give one small solitary shit about the narrative of that game, so really neither should you. You're here to collect things and jump on things, remember.
The five worlds plus one hub in Yooka-Laylee are huge and sprawling, and they become moreso when you pay collectables to upgrade them to even larger versions with more collectables. This feels like a huge problem right up until the gap between worlds 4 and 5, where you obtain the ability to fly. It's not a problem after that so I might suggest speedrunning up to that point and then going back to gather stuff afterward.
Except... flight also kind of renders 80% of the platforming challenges obsolete, so really you have to pick which bed you're going to make and lie in: Easy exploration or oops the platforming is trivial now. I guess you could just not fly around the platforming challenges, but sometimes there's a collectable RIGHT THERE and it's just too tempting.
There's just a LOT of Yooka-Laylee. I was warned going into this, "Don't try to 100% this game, it isn't worth it" and I was like "Yeah whatever I do what I want" and hey it turns out that what I want is NOT to 100% this game. By which I mean, I don't just want to not 100% this, I ACTIVELY DESIRE to leave it unfinished. It deserves to keep its secrets secret.
Right now. Maybe I'll go back to it. But there's just too much, there's heaps and piles of this game and it's GOOD but it's too much, you can't eat that in one sitting, you'll get sick and puke on the nice rug. Pace yourself.
Like I was about 60% through the game when I stumbled on a whole new type of collectable not listed in the pause menu stats. Why would you do that? That's a dick move, guys.
Enemies in this game... mmh. There's like one enemy type, a bee with homing missiles, that provides any problem. Aside from that, enemies may as well not exist. Which is an interesting choice but also means I don't remember them at all.
I don't have much else to add. The music is good, the graphics are pretty, the platforming is strong and precise, the collecting is fun but goes on a long, long time past its welcome. The bosses are kind of annoying but not a huge holdup, except for the last boss, which is the kind of multi-stage final exam boss I always wish I could written-test my way out of.
("When the boss [___] in the second part, firing [___], the correct retaliation is [____]." Seriously, just give me a pop-up menu quiz so I can prove I know what to do, and let's skip this crap.)
What I'm trying to convey here, fumblingly, is that Yooka-Layle is workmanlike. It's a punch-clock collectathon, it's good but not great, there's nothing truly special here. That breaks my heart because I truly believed in its plucky spirit. Also it's weird that I'm kind of upset it's MERELY a good game instead of a legend? But there was hype built up, y'know? I expected this would be really great and instead it's just... fine. Which is, by definition, fine. But it could have been more.
That said, Yooka-Laylee strived to bring back this style of collectathon and by god it really did. I've seen old games in the genre (like Ty the Tasmanian Tiger) make a comeback and of course there's new games like Super Lucky's Tale, a Hat In Time, Unbox, etc carrying the way forward. Yooka-Laylee accomplished everything it set out to do, maybe not with a gold medal but I've got to at least give it a bronze and a special achievement certificate.
Maybe that's enough?
I dunno. I'll be there if there's a sequel. As I said, this is my kind of thing, even when it's only okay.
I know that sounds obvious, but: I didn't say "enjoy" late-90s 3D collectathons. I said LOVE them. Warts and all. I mean you have to be okay with a sometimes-shoddy camera, you have to not mind looking at a screen that says you have 199 out of 200 things with no idea where the last one is.
You need to be okay with motivating yourself to do ridiculous things under the expectation that MAYBE this will pay off and get you a reward. You gotta be okay with every character in the game going "YAPNAP BLAPBLAP" instead of having voice acting.
You gotta love to scour a map top to bottom and do it again once you've unlocked new moves later in the game.
You have to look back at the past with unclouded eyes, really LOOK at the flaws and ask yourself, is that what I'm here for?
I can't blame anyone for saying "No, Sqrlmog! What you speak of is Hell, and I have freedom in my heart and joy in my step as I walk away from it!"
I'm not walking away from it, though. I love the genre and I liked Yooka-Laylee a whole dang lot. It is aggressively not flawless, but I knew what I was here for and it delivers what I wanted it to.
I would talk about the plot except nobody cares. The characters sure don't care. They're aware they're in a video game and they do not give one small solitary shit about the narrative of that game, so really neither should you. You're here to collect things and jump on things, remember.
The five worlds plus one hub in Yooka-Laylee are huge and sprawling, and they become moreso when you pay collectables to upgrade them to even larger versions with more collectables. This feels like a huge problem right up until the gap between worlds 4 and 5, where you obtain the ability to fly. It's not a problem after that so I might suggest speedrunning up to that point and then going back to gather stuff afterward.
Except... flight also kind of renders 80% of the platforming challenges obsolete, so really you have to pick which bed you're going to make and lie in: Easy exploration or oops the platforming is trivial now. I guess you could just not fly around the platforming challenges, but sometimes there's a collectable RIGHT THERE and it's just too tempting.
There's just a LOT of Yooka-Laylee. I was warned going into this, "Don't try to 100% this game, it isn't worth it" and I was like "Yeah whatever I do what I want" and hey it turns out that what I want is NOT to 100% this game. By which I mean, I don't just want to not 100% this, I ACTIVELY DESIRE to leave it unfinished. It deserves to keep its secrets secret.
Right now. Maybe I'll go back to it. But there's just too much, there's heaps and piles of this game and it's GOOD but it's too much, you can't eat that in one sitting, you'll get sick and puke on the nice rug. Pace yourself.
Like I was about 60% through the game when I stumbled on a whole new type of collectable not listed in the pause menu stats. Why would you do that? That's a dick move, guys.
Enemies in this game... mmh. There's like one enemy type, a bee with homing missiles, that provides any problem. Aside from that, enemies may as well not exist. Which is an interesting choice but also means I don't remember them at all.
I don't have much else to add. The music is good, the graphics are pretty, the platforming is strong and precise, the collecting is fun but goes on a long, long time past its welcome. The bosses are kind of annoying but not a huge holdup, except for the last boss, which is the kind of multi-stage final exam boss I always wish I could written-test my way out of.
("When the boss [___] in the second part, firing [___], the correct retaliation is [____]." Seriously, just give me a pop-up menu quiz so I can prove I know what to do, and let's skip this crap.)
What I'm trying to convey here, fumblingly, is that Yooka-Layle is workmanlike. It's a punch-clock collectathon, it's good but not great, there's nothing truly special here. That breaks my heart because I truly believed in its plucky spirit. Also it's weird that I'm kind of upset it's MERELY a good game instead of a legend? But there was hype built up, y'know? I expected this would be really great and instead it's just... fine. Which is, by definition, fine. But it could have been more.
That said, Yooka-Laylee strived to bring back this style of collectathon and by god it really did. I've seen old games in the genre (like Ty the Tasmanian Tiger) make a comeback and of course there's new games like Super Lucky's Tale, a Hat In Time, Unbox, etc carrying the way forward. Yooka-Laylee accomplished everything it set out to do, maybe not with a gold medal but I've got to at least give it a bronze and a special achievement certificate.
Maybe that's enough?
I dunno. I'll be there if there's a sequel. As I said, this is my kind of thing, even when it's only okay.
