23rd October 2017, 7:13 PM
Dark Jaguar Wrote:Yes, it's shorter. It's a short game. I would rather it be longer. That doesn't ruin the game though.It's not only short though, it's also really easy, provided that you can figure out where to go. That is a big issue. Yooka-Laylee, in contrast, isn't as long or tough as some classic 3d platformers, but it's much more in line with what you expect from the genre.
Quote:As far as "tied to the moveset", I don't just mean "here's a ramp, use that ramp climbing move". I mean when seen overall, the structure of one platform to the next creates a natural "flow" that is just fun. Not one obstacle, but the next 20 obstacles when viewed as one cohesive path.The levels have flow? So far at least, and I've played like seven or eight levels, it's very generic stuff. Either stages are linear and average, with a succession of challenges to face in a decently fun but not great way, or they are subpar open levels with big level-design problems. These stages feel aimless, like a large space with a bunch of stuff semi-randomly tossed in all over. It's fine, but is pretty average stuff. You'll find better level designs, and controls, in mediocre, mid-tier 3d platformers from the late '90s to early '00s.
As for Yooka-Laylee, its levels are large, detailed, so much fun to explore... there are worlds of difference between the two. Of course Y-L is not perfect, the Rextro minigames are kind of bad most obviously and I certainly agree that Nintendo's help would have made it better, like they did with the Rare games from when Rare was a part of Nintendo, but Yooka-Laylee is still pretty good. (To compare the game to some other post-Nintendo-partnership titles, Yooka-Laylee is quite a bit better than Lair (though unlike some I don't hate this game) or Nitrobike, to name a few. Or Grabbed by the Ghoulies, for that matter.)
Quote:The sad truth is, even the most terrible morally reprehensible monster might paint a good painting now and then. Yes, the controversies behind the making of this game aren't good. The game itself is still great though. The people who are arguable morally worse have made a better game than the good guys, in my opinion. Not a moral judgement, but an artistic one.Fortunately their game isn't anywhere remotely near as good as the 'good guys' game is.
Quote: Compare this to Yooka Laylee. The quills are just scattershot throughout the level. There's no sense of using them as breadcrumbs the way notes were used in the Banjo games. They are just "there". If you ask me, there was key staff missing from the development of this game, that staff being Miyamoto and the gang, the Nintendo big wigs that guided their hand during the development of games like Donkey Kong Country. Retro has that same guidance right now, and watching staff interviews indicates just how much that mattered. Things like this are why I don't think YL is as good as the old N64 games. DK64, whatever else you might say, also used bananas properly as breadcrumbs.I've seen people complain about this since the games' release, but I've never understood the complaint because the way Y-L puts powerups around doesn't seem very different from most other 3d platformers! There's plenty of gating, strings of quills often lead to areas with things to collect or to important areas, etc. I think they did a fine job with locating the powerups. But people complained, and in the big patch didn't they say that they improved on the issue further? So how much of this complaint even still applies to post-patch Yooka-Laylee?
As I said above I very much agree that Nintendo's influence would have made the game better, but they did a pretty good job on their own.
Also, I find it kind of ironic that you complain about this in respect to Yooka-Laylee, because to me it's AHiT which has big issues with how the base items, those green gems, are located. The gems are everywhere, but in the open levels what's the point?
Okay, so I was looking into this a bit, and here's the thing.
Mario 64 and Sunshine have gold coins and stars/shines. Gold coins mostly work as they have before, you collect 100 for an extra life. They reset each time you go into a stage, so they are always all there in the beginning. Stars or Shines are your main objectives, and there is a separate version of the stage for each one, so each Star or Shine is its own level. There are also some Stars/Shines which you can get by getting 100 coins in a level, and the game records the max number of coins you've gotten in each level and whether you've gotten that star. Unlike a Rare game there aren't exactly 100 coins in each stage, there are more, either a limited or in some cases perhaps unlimited number, but still this is nice to know.
In Banjo-Kazooie and other games in that style, however, levels are larger open spaces full of minor coin-like collectibles -- notes, gems, coins, whatever -- to collect, as well as major star-like collectibles -- jiggies, what have you. When you do an objective in an area of the map you get one of the major collectible. In most games in this style, major collectibles are a limited resource -- collecting them once collects them for good. The original Banjo-Kazooie is an exception however, as the minor collectibles reset each time you enter a level and you need to collect all 100 in one go in order to get the reward for doing so. I always really disliked this element of the game, it holds it back. I won't get into that here again now, though. Most games after B-K do better and only make you collect things once.
Yooka-Laylee follows that model, and has stuff scattered around its large levels for you to collect, both major and minor. The minor stuff only can be collected once, as you'd hope, and the game keeps track of all the stats you'd want, including how many of each you've gotten, etc. It's great and exploring the levels is a lot of fun; the level designs are really good! I could make a few minor complaints beyond the aforementioned bad Rextro minigames, such as that there are a few key items that you can't get without powers you don't have yet that aren't clearly marked as such, so I wasted time once trying to get something you have to come back later for, but this is pretty minor stuff. It's a fantastic game.
But A Hat in Time? It's kind of weird. The game has the Mario 64 design of having a separate level for every major collectible, but the Yooka-Laylee style of having to get the minor collectibles to buy powers, and the 'what the heck why would you do things that way' style of minor collectible pickup. Okay, so in this game, you need to get green gems to buy powers. Green gems are all over the levels, scattered around leading you nowhere relevant because in the open stages 95% of them have nothing to do with the mission you're actually on. So you collect them once and it keeps track of your total like in a Rare game, right?
Nope. The minor pickups all respawn every time you enter a stage, first. That could be fine, but this is nothing like Mario 64 because of the store element, rem,ember. In this game, if you re-enter a level repeatedly you can just collect the same ones over and over to add to your green gem total! So unlike a Rare game, green gems in this game are an unlimited grindable resource, not a limited resource you get with skill and exploration. Following on this, the game doesn't seem to have any kind of stat screen keeping track of how many green gems you've collected either, so what's the most you've gotten in each level? Who knows, the game doesn't keep track. This is not how any good 3d platformer does things, to say the least! So as I said, it's the 'what the heck,why would you do things that way' school of design and it is not good.
Basically, they decided to make a game mostly inspired by Mario 64, but also put in a Rare-style shop with powers you have to earn, and messed up the way you get the currency to buy the powers with. When I play a level in this kind of game, my first goal is to get the objective item, the Mario 64 Star equivalent. If I get some other stuff, coins, gems, etc., along the way that's nice, and finding stuff can be fun, but I'm not the type who must get everything. But it's hard to focus on your objective, even when the game makes it very obvious like this one does with its large on-screen 'go this way' indicators, when there are other items all over that you could go and collect if you wanted; it's kind of tempting, even though I know that most of it is, again, irrelevant to the stage at hand. This is a real problem which holds this game back, and is really distracting and kind of awful. I know this is kind of how Mario 64 and Sunshine work as well, but again the difference in what coins/gems mean in each game is significant. Also those games have way better level designs than this one does, of course, and that helps to say the least.
So, that's two major flaws with A Hat in Time's "coin" system, it badly messes up how to get coins (gems) by allowing and perhaps even implicitly suggesting grind in a game with purchasable powerups, and discourages exploration in a platformer full of stuff scattered around by not keeping track of how many "coins" you have gotten or can get in the level.
How is this anything other than the flawed, average-at-best game design that it is? And this is a fairly important element of any game in this genre, too!
In pretty much every category, the difference between Yooka-Laylee and A Hat in Time is that the former is a quality professional title (that I really love, it's one of the best games of the year), while the other is an indie effort by people who don't know the genre nearly as well, and it shows (that I kind of like anyway, if we ignore all of the non-game-related stuff which we shouldn't).