I came late enough to the original Yooka-Laylee that, by the time I was acquainting myself with its titular lizard and bat protagonists, it felt like its more egregious launch issues – its much-criticised camera for one – had already been ironed out. I enjoyed it enough that I wasn’t wholly convinced Yooka-Replaylee – a “remastered and enhanced” version of Playtonic’s 2017 collectathon throwback – could do enough to warrant a return. But after a couple hours tootling around its overhauled worlds, I’m happy to be back, even if it does feel like some of its deliberate old-school charm has been lost along the way.
Yooka-Laylee, to recap, was a Kickstarter smash back in 2015, managing to raise over £2m with the promise of some nostalgic 3D platform action heavily inspired by the 90s collectathon kings like Banjo-Kazooie and Donkey Kong 64. And who better to steer the ship than a team of Rare veterans, many of whom had worked on those earlier games? Skip ahead two years and the end result was a hugely characterful love letter to the classics – all colourful worlds to explore, heaving checklists of stuff to collect, and relentless puns – which was enjoyable enough if decidedly uneven. Two years later Playtonic released the genuinely brilliant Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair, veering closer to Retro Studios’ side-scrolling Donkey Kong Country revival. And seven years after that, we now have Yooka-Replaylee and an effort to iron out some of the wrinkles in that earliest game.
It’s good! Although I’ll admit I wasn’t immediately won over. Yooka-Replaylee’s most obvious changes feel fussy in a way that slightly betrays the elegant economy of the 90s-era classics the original Yooka-Laylee so successfully aped. There is, for instance, a far wordier, weirdly expanded script that seems determined to give everything a backstory. We get a lengthy intro charting Yooka and Laylee’s unseen adventures prior to the start of the game (originally we meet them sunbathing on a rock and that’s pretty much it); we get some expanded lore on the newly anthropomorphised Old Book, even an in-universe explanation for the existence of progress gating. It lacks the original script’s snappy old-school brevity and punchy wit, and speaks to an excess reflected elsewhere too; in the pretty but fussier visual design, for instance, which loses some of the original’s charm and clarity. Even the characters’ distinctive profiles are now muddied with mops and tufts of hair they didn’t have before!
I appreciate we’re perhaps veering into Old Man Shouts At Cloud territory here, though, and the good news is Replaylee’s more fundamental revisions undoubtedly make for a more enjoyably fluid experience as you explore the openness of each world. Your roll, for instance – useful for getting around quickly and thundering up ramps – is no longer bound by a stamina limit, massively improving the flow of traversal. And everything feels tighter, more precise across the board. Curiously, the classic double-jump has – unless I’m being extremely daft – been jettisoned in favour of a sort of static upward leap to reach higher places, but for the most part it’s business as usual abilities-wise. And while the upfront dump of moves has confounded me a bit as I struggle to recall something critical to completing an objective (previously these were meted out gradually over time), it’s a choice that ultimately feels more liberating.
There are other obvious improvements too: a better camera; unlockable fast-travel points; easier access to useful information, such as the location of collectibles you’ve already found; the decision to put vendors Trowzer and Vendi at the start of each level rather than somewhere arbitrary you’ll likely have forgotten by the time you return, and probably a bunch of stuff I haven’t yet noticed too. Playtonic has also, I think, ditched some additional busywork by setting each world (haunted bog, fairytale tundra, shimmering casino, etc.) to its expanded secondary state from the start, meaning all challenges are available from the word go. And shorn of the original’s various niggling frictions, it’s been much easier to sink into Yooka-Laylee’s engaging whimsy, and appreciate the strengths of its design.
The first world, in particular – a tropical sprawl of ancient ruins and towering peaks – is a riot of imagination, bounding from checkpoint races to minecart challenges to combat encounters to timed agility challenges to platform puzzles, and more. Some older sections have been intelligently reworked and new diversions added – including oodles of coins to collect and spend on some very amusing cosmetic wearables – meaning there’s more to see and do on your travels, further improving that exploration flow. Sure, all this is ultimately in service of ticking yet another collectible off your list, but there’s enough invention that, early on at least, it doesn’t seem dull. And, yes, the daffy charm and spirited silliness, the gently ribald humour, has – despite the fluffier, less focused script – survived the overhaul.
Granted, I’m only a few worlds in, and likely still in the honeymoon phase – particularly as I do seem to remember the original game falling apart a bit as proceedings went on, later levels not quite managing to capture the same dense creativity and quality as the earlier ones. This, really, is what I’m most curious about – to see if Playtonic’s revisions extend that far. But for the moment, I’m thoroughly enjoying my time with Yooka-Replaylee, even if I can’t shake the irony that all this modernisation has made for a throwback to a throwback that doesn’t feel so much like a throwback any more.
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