Yooka-Laylee Gets It Right!

     As seen in my previous post, I picked up Yooka-Laylee for Xbox One at launch. I was excited when I first heard about this game being put together by some of the original members of Rare Ltd. I loved some of their classic games including Banjo Kazooie and it's pretty obvious this was going to be somewhat of a spiritual successor to the Banjo games, hence the name itself. Although I was excited, I was a little worried as this is a Kickstarter backed project and we know how some of those have turned out at release (cough* cough* Mighty No.9). But after sinking about 10 hours or so into the game, I love every part of it. Every aspect of the game is so nostalgic but it part of the gaming world and as we developed better technology and gaming moved forward, they started to die out. I thought I was going to pick this game up, play it for a couple hours, enjoy the nostalgia factor, and then never play it again. But I keep coming back to it. I believe the biggest reason is the puzzles. Some of them are what you would expect from this genre but they perfected the difficulty. Its hard enough to where it takes you a few tries to figure out the puzzles and complete them, but easy enough to allow the player to still enjoy the game without becoming too frustrated. A couple of my favorites being the shooting gallery in World 1 and the dark cave that you have to traverse by rolling in World 2. They even mastered the difficulty for the boss battles. So far the three I have beaten were hard enough to give me a sense of accomplishment when I beat them but were easy enough that I didn't have to spend a ton of time on them. There are so many things to collect and I love that you can unlock new skills in each world that allow you to discover more in the previous world, which makes backtracking in this game a joy. Not to mention Yooka-Laylee is so bright, colorful, and just beautiful to look at. Playtonic did an amazing job with this game and definitely honored Banjo Kazooie perfectly, I cant wait to jump back in and finish it!

 

Updates:

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild: 85 shrines down, 35 left to go.
FPS Development: Almost done with the game, new Dev Diary is coming soon