Yooka-Laylee is looking amazing

[A Black Falcon]

Still haven't lost that Rare sense of humor, I see.

And not only that, Trowzer is curled around, so he goes down through one leg of the pants then back up through the other side. It's silly stuff. :)


The Rare sense of style and humor are 100% here in this game, and it's amazing! From the writing to the character designs to the music to the controls to the gameplay, this game is exactly what they promised it would be: a new game in the same style as Rare's N64 platformers. Because many of the same people worked on this game they absolutely nail it, and it's so good... I love the soundtrack, the controls and gameplay are great, the writing is that silly British stuff you expect, it's all there.

Well, I guess it does have fewer levels than their N64 games had, but it had a lower budget and price too so that balances out.

The camera movement is pretty awkward on the up/down axis, with little range of movement and slower speed compared to left/right. Frankly that was par for the course on the N64, so it's not like it's worse than those games, but these days people expect more. No one was really asking to bring back old school controls after all. Still, that seems like a quick fix. Overall, the camera does a fine job. Also, the "quick turn" camera button is always welcome and I make heavy use of it both here and in Breath of the Wild.

I honestly don't understand what people are talking about when they complain about the camera, it's good. The only possible complaint I have about it is that it's annoying that when you go through a door the camera faces you instead of being behind you, so you have to then either hit the 'center camera' button or run into the screen then spin the stick around in order to get the camera where it should be. That's it, though.

As far as level size, yes they are bigger than Banjo Kazooie, but that doesn't QUITE make up for it. In fact, I'd say the pricing of the game is an admission that this is "Banjo-Lite" in that sense. I really do think that 2 or 3 more levels would have evened things out a bit, and answered another complaint about variety in level design. I for one actually LIKE the main evil corporation. Yeah, it's possible to get lost, but that's been true in all Rare's collectathon hub worlds. However, making 5 levels longer just means you get tired of the individual worlds quicker and want to see more variety. I kinda hope that DLC comes along and adds a handful of new worlds to this game (they can add in an extra chapter or two to the main story as well as a second big boss fight with Capital B). This isn't a major complaint, don't misunderstand, but the comparisons to the original games (which this game demands we do) mean it can't be ignored.

I also would rather have seen more slightly smaller levels than fewer larger ones, but making new levels costs more for sure, in all the textures, art, etc. that you would need... expanding the current ones instead probably saved them a good bit.

As for adding whole worlds in DLC though, that'd be some big DLC... it'd be cool if they do, but they haven't said the game will even have DLC, and I think it's fine as it is. The game may be shorter than the N64 Rare 3d platformers, you might be right about that, but it's still a 20-plus hour game for sure, or more if you take your time. It's not short.