The worst thing about Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair is that it's trying to retain the "soul" and humor of Banjo-Kazooie, while clearly being an homage and iteration of the Donkey Kong Country series. Not to say that Donkey Kong wasn't funny at the SNES games, but the humor was in small gestures instead of being one of the main elements like it is in Banjo.

Everything that characterizes the characters in Donkey Kong is before and after a level (with the exception of the waiting animation that happens if you don't move the gamepad). While you're in the game designer's challenge, he wants you to fall in love with the music and enjoy the obstacles he made with so much care. Yooka-Laylee's music is completely forgettable, to not say that is altright BAD, and the whole aesthetic is horrible, from the characters to the collectables. However, the strength of this game comes precisely when it is being an honest platformer.

Well, the truth is, the game is kind of awesome. In my first two hours of Yooka-Laylee 2 (I'll call it that for short) I was finding it to be a completely normal game. It didn't arouse any good feelings in me, but none VERY negative either. But things started to get to me around 3 or 4 hours of gameplay, which is when I had gotten used to the gameplay. I mean, before I played Yooka-Laylee 2 (and the only reason I played it) I did a marathon with my friend Aiden (love you bro) playing all FIVE Donkey Kong Country to the end. And when you come off the adrenaline of having played two insanely good games that complement what the other games in the franchise did, and update the design philosophy for a new generation, it's hard not to feel that literally every other 2D platformer outside of these are weak.

What I mean by that is: the bar was set obscenely high, and I had to lower my expectations. Once I went into the game enjoying what he was offering me instead of asking for things he wasn't going to do, everything got much better. RetroStudio's Donkey Kong games are heavy and accurate. Each movement needs to be calculated to the millimeter, you need to feel and absorb the monkeys' gameplay and have a good enough connection to become an extension of your own body. Yooka-Laylee 2 is the opposite. In fact, its logic operates in a similar way to 2D Mario games. Take your skill set, and react instinctively, improvising whatever comes along (obviously within the limits imposed by the level. You don't have freedom, but that's the magic of Donkey Kong games). When I understood that, the game was a delight to play, I went through all the stages the way I most want to play Donkey Kong: using dash to run through the entire thing without looking back.

Best of all, Yooka-Laylee 2 has some great ideas. For instance: I love the hub world and how collectibles are implemented in your progression. The premise of the game is: the villain of the game has a lair... the so-called -IMPOSSIBLE LAIR-, that you can face at any time. The big issue is that the Impossible Lair is... almost impossible, as the name implies. So to have a better chance of winning, you need to go around the world solving puzzles, unlocking stages to play them in order to rescue a bee. When you rescue a bee, it becomes part of your shield in the Impossible Lair, this means that the amount of hits you can take increases the more stages you finish, because at the end of every stage there is, obviously, a bee.

The game has 48 bees and 20 levels. 8 of the 48 bees are "secret" and can be found in the hub world. But if it's one bee per level, how come there are 40? Simple: every level has two versions. Just as Symphony of the Night's castle has its inverted version, Yooka-Laylee 2's levels have a sister version that changes, most of the time, drastically the gameplay. It's hard to explain to anyone who has never played or seen a gameplay, so I won't go into the game's mechanics too deeply, but basically the overworld is full of interactions and allows you to play with the properties of the scenario. You might fill the surroundings of a level with water, and find that the "inverted" version of it is an aquatic level. Or, on a stage that is located near the furnace, you can place smoke on top of the stage, revealing that its "inverted" version is the same stage but with clouds that add another layer of platforming.

Yooka-Laylee doesn't have good music or decent sound design, so the setting work is all done through these interactions. Turn on the power of a level to make it energized, press a lever that lift the level to play a SCARY vertical version, make the level swing, to play a version where your main means of locomotion is ropes. These ideas are very good and cohesive with what the game does. It got to the point where I was genuinely looking forward to seeing what the next gimmick they were going to come up with, and that feeling is very DKC-like.

Talking about the Impossible Lair itself, it's probably the hardest video game level I've ever played in my life. Even with 47 bees, I sweat to pass. There are 4 bossfights (although one is almost a tutorial) and insanely difficult platforming sessions on a kaizo level, that require you to know all the game mechanics. As I said earlier, you can do Impossible Lair from the start, but the game is smart enough to wire all of the game's systems together so that you NEED to play all (or almost all) of the levels. Did you skip any? less bees, less coins to open more levels and less knowledge. Perhaps you skipped the level that presents the platforms that fall and come back every 3 seconds, and you will miss this mechanic.

This review doesn't exactly have a point, but what I'm getting at with all this is that, despite having a bad reputation, being ugly, having bad music, having bad characters, and a bunch more flaws: Yooka-Laylee 2 is non ironically one of the most inventive 2D platformers I've ever played, and overall I enjoyed it more than Donkey Kong Country 1 and 3 (less than 2, Returns and Tropical Freeze). I don't know if it's for everyone, because the game is HUGE, the levels are big, the difficulty scales and that requires dedication. But if you're a person who has already dedicated hours to the DKC games, it's worth a try.

it's all right! it wears its inspirations on its sleeve, but it never really feels like it excels at doing its own thing. particularly towards the back half of the game when it becomes apparent just how few original ideas the game has to offer when the same handful of thematically ill-fitting enemy types are haphazardly sprinkled along same-y looking stages that blur together in a slurry of increasingly annoying and uninteresting platforming challenges. it's impressive what they did manage to pull off, but i kinda feel like people are gassing it up a lil too much

"Why did you rate Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair five stars?"

The Short Answer: Several of my friends have their names in this game thanks to a contest that was held on Twitter before this game's release and that alone is enough to put a big goofy grin on my face.

The Long Answer: The best way to call this game is "If Tropical Freeze had a sequel with 1/10th of the budget that Tropical Freeze had but somehow managed to make something almost as solid with that budget". The mechanics in this game are surprisingly solid and there's so many different unique ideas that could've been disastrous if these ideas didn't stick the landing but end up working great together. The whole "overworld is a different perspective from the levels and you have to explore this mini Zelda-esque map to find more platforming levels to gather more hitpoints for the really long, hard platforming gauntlet that you can access at any time" gimmick was something I was not expecting to work as well as it did, but there were times where I wanted to explore the overworld more than actually play the platforming levels. I love that technically I can try to get to the ending at any time, but the platforming levels were also there as an option to help ease myself into the Impossible Lair's difficulty.

As for the levels themselves? Fantastic. My favorite part of this game is the fact that every level believably exists in the same kingdom, so instead of "grass level, ice level, lava level, sky level", you get "small bee town, small coastal bee town frozen over, factory next to the bee town filled with acid, airship docked near factory near bee town". It feels like a way to both save on cost (since this game isn't working from the same budget as a current DKC game) that also makes this world feel fleshed out and believable. I love that we get to see different parts of this bee-themed countryside with their little hexagon-shaped windmills and honey storage plants. It's cute! And while you're exploring these little bee-themed rooms with the honeycomb wallpapers, you get to hear David Wise, Grant Kirkhope, Matt Griffin and Dan Murdoch write some legit underrated video game bangers in the soundtrack.

Finally? Bee puns. Always get a huge kick out of any game that decides to go all the way with a game's theming and, in Impossible Lair's case, that means about 50 different bee and insect puns. Definitely beats the joke style in the original Yooka-Laylee, which is "I'm still sour about the Microsoft buyout".

This is a gorgeous re-iteration of Donkey Kong and DK64, with absolutely flawless music. The movement and level design really elevate the DK formula and the addition of overworld puzzles and level interaction adds a compelling dimension to the platforming. Unfortunately overworld movement is frustratingly limited, and there were a number of glitches throughout my playthrough. The tonic system is really cool, but barely utilized as most tonics are purely aesthetic. The inability to quit during a level and resume at a checkpoint is annoying. The titular lair is just not my jam - I appreciate that there is the option for a high-difficulty challenge, but I wish I could have gotten some kind of resolution for my more casual playthrough. Overall a decent, if janky, nostalgia trip.

Oh please, pleaaaase bonk me on the head. Okay, it's not as bad as it looks I swear. Big boobies sure, no nudity also for sure! I'm not scratching the bottom of the barrel yet, and you're wondering why this is in your feed. Ok so it's gonna be a doozy but here's roughly what happened: I wanted to play a sex game since it's one of the only types of games I haven't had the pleasure to play yet, I scroll through a bunch and decide it's not the time yet (they're scary). Lo and behold, skip a few hours and I'm looking for cracked copy of Journey for my bestie (i dont want to make her pay games just to play with me) and there it is, obviously. I recognize it, check through Steam yada yada, one of the top tags is "cute" and the price is at its highest sale that settles it I'll play through this.

Seems I cooked up a long excuse for why I have played this. Don't worry, I won't go to such lengths for the gay porn game I have in my radar. It's quite easy, dont last too long, but when it gets harder it's very fair! It's too basic to really get a higher score, although unphotoshopping a picture is quite unique from what I'd done so far. They're risque, but they probably would look like normal pictures if she had normal proportions. That'd be less bang for the buck (flat women we love u)! Now go get that bag gurl. We goin through the 4 seasons stay fresh all year long.

What baffling decision however, is that there's no romance? Rina and even your invisible self-insert with your name go far to make sure the other knows there's nothing more than a deep friendship here. It's not that I am against it, but that's not what I expected for the target demographic. It dont have the sex gentlemen, maybe we ought to play Bald Gate III. Anyways look at that white woman she made me pay to edit photos I will never forget that night.

if you think this game “plays weird” and don’t get the hype i beg you to play 5 other NES platformers then come back, relax, and feel the lushness of the first true strand type game.

super mario bros is not the primordially simple jumping game it is often introduced as. platformers had ages to mature in the hypercompetitive arena of the arcade throughout the 70’s and early 80’s. aside from its understatedly elegant aesthetic, the ambition in SMB is in the elevation of movement from merely a mode of traversal to a gymnastic, expressive activity.

megaman, simon belmont, and ryu hayabusa are all transparently simple state machines— the amount of possible actions they can take is finite and countable. super mario bros did not invent momentum in platforming, nor was it the first to leverage the additional complications that a more involved system of movement entails. the friction between the player avatar and the ground. the acceleration from a dead stop to a full run. the short moment after taking your finger off the jump button before the character truly starts to fall. all the little intricacies and details compound to make mario a much more expressive vessel for a player to inhabit. what sets SMB apart is that the movement is honed to the extent it becomes even more natural than the comparatively simple systems of the above games.

mario’s body doesn’t literally move like the human form does, but negotiating the balance of a jump in mid-air, trying to establish steady footing on unhelpful terrain, and wheelin and dealing with newton’s first law in general is central to the human experience. in super mario bros, nintendo squarely refocuses the platformer from a cabaret of obstacles to a celebration of acrobatic motivity

and so, it became the bedrock upon which their castle was built

One of the greatest souls-likes.

This game just gets it, the level design is marvelous and combat, although minimalist at first, quickly begins to grow on you as you unlock more and more mechanics, making you feel like a true umami master by the time you reach the endgame.

It isn't too difficult, the biggest challenges were auto-imposed by myself, but still a really fun time just due to how great the movement and levels feel. The story is also solid, it takes itself a little too serious at times, but most of the time it's equally engaging without being intrusive and also funny, with a strong, sometimes in-your-face leftist message, which isn't surprising coming from this studio.

The skins are also very cute and some of them are neat references to other games, I specially like the one referencing Going Under, the studio's previous title.
Overall, an incredibly solid experience, totally worth your time and money, crafted with love by a small indie studio.

A disgrace to the Naruto Storm Legacy.
It fails as a Naruto game, and it fails as a video game.

A £50+ pounds scam game that features Ai-generated voice acting.