Completion Status: Between 25 - 30 hours. All forty levels completed, with all twit coins in each level collected. 42/48 beetallions collected (missed some of the other beetallions hidden in the overworld). Only collected about half of the tonics in the game.
~ ~ ~
When I first saw the initial reveal trailer for this game in a Nintendo Direct, I'll admit, I was a bit underwhelmed. While it was eventually consumed by a lot of online negativity (what isn't, these days?), I admired how the original Yooka-Laylee attempted to resurrect the sort of 3D game design that prevailed in a by-gone era when the modern internet was still in its infancy and new releases still had a sense of mystique to them. By all accounts, the 2D side-scrolling action of Impossible Lair seemed like a step back, an admission of defeat on the part of the devs, and a retreat to the well-trodden hunting ground of many other indie developers.
I still want Playtonic to go back to 3D game design, don't get me wrong, but I'm happy to report that my initial skepticism was undeserved. The new Yooka-Laylee game is a delight. It still draws from the nostalgic pool of classic Rareware game design, but, this time, it's SNES-era Donkey Kong Country as opposed to N64-era Banjo-Kazooie. And it really doesn't even attempt to hide this. Impossible Lair unashamedly steals a LOT from the DKC trilogy. Whereas the original gave the sense that it wasn't really bettering the formula of Banjo-Kazooie, though, Impossible Lair feels like a much more contemporary title in all the right ways.
For those not in the know, the Yooka-Laylee series features a pair of dual protagonists: Yooka, an earnest male Chameleon and Laylee, a sarcastic female bat. In this title, their arch-rival, the villainous Capital B (basically Gru from Despicable Me), uses a device called the Hive Mind to enslave Queen Phoebee's royal beetallion, which has brought chaos to the Royal Stingdom she rules over (did I mention they're bees? They're totally bees). Capital B has ensconced himself in an intimidating fortress called the Impossible Lair, and it's your job to infiltrate the place and defeat the Big Bad. But good luck pulling that off without the help of the captured beetallion.
At this point, the first sort of innovative feature of this game becomes apparent. While the player is expected to fail when they're thrown into the Impossible Lair and defeated at the very start of the game, showing them how difficult the venture is... they can totally go straight back in and beat it whenever they want. There's nothing to stop the player from slowly, painfully memorizing everything they would have to do to complete that endgame stage and beat the game while skipping 95% of this title's content. It remains open to challenge through the rest of the game, making it the business of the player to decide when they feel powerful enough to challenge it. For anyone who is even moderately well-acquainted with Nintendo's output, this should immediately bring to mind The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. In that game, as in this one, your one real goal is to infiltrate the lair of the Big Bad and defeat him in combat, and that possibility is open to the player as soon as they complete the prologue. The rest of the game is the process of exploring and powering up your character to the point where the player can feel confident in tackling the final challenge set before them. It was a very cool structure in Zelda, and it's cool here, as well.
The question becomes: "How do I go about powering up my freakish Chameleon/Bat duo to the point where they can stand tall against this mighty challenge?" Well, as it turns out, members of the beetallion have gotten trapped in various tomes (levels reside within physical books. It's possible the world of Yooka-Laylee itself might be in a book or something; I'm not entirely sure of the metaphysics involved here) and hidey-holes throughout the game's world. Each time you liberate one of these buzzybodies, they'll dedicate themselves to your cause and, when you're tackling the Impossible Lair, take a point of damage for you before dying. One or two of these little dudes don't make a huge difference, but by the time you've collected 40+ of them, you've developed a very weird and morally troubling but effective force-field of sapient bugs which helps you to survive the challenges contained within the Impossible Lair.
Unlike most 2D platformers, you're not just going from level to level here. There's an expansive 3D overworld, viewed from an almost isometric viewpoint, that's so filled with secrets, mechanics, puzzles, interactions, etc. that it's almost like a little game in its own right. In general, the default versions of levels are generally easy to access. There are 20 unique levels overall, but each level has an alternate form that you need to solve an environmental puzzle to access, making the game 40 levels strong in total (not counting the Lair). As a simple example, one tome is immersed in a pond and, appropriately, features a level with a focus on water and swimming. Find a way to freeze this pond, though, and you can access a version of the level where all of the water is frozen, leading to levels with such radically altered game design that they feel completely unique. As you progress through the game, the puzzles involved with accessing these alternate levels go from simple to surprisingly complex, and can sometimes involve manipulating things across entire regions of the map.
As with any decent Rare-inspired platformer, this one is also heavy with secrets and collectibles. In every level, you'll be able to collect up to five Twit Coins (think of the Donkey Kong letters in the DKC games, which they're somewhat comparable to), and, over the course of the game, you'll be able to use these to buy access to new parts of the overworld. You'll additionally be finding tonics everywhere, in addition to being able to buy them with the quills you collect for killing enemies (think coins in a Mario game). These potions do all sorts of things: apply a variety of visual filters to the game (my favorite gives the game a hideous green look ala games played on the OG Game Boy), make changes to the game design that increase or decrease the level of difficulty (such as adding more checkpoints, making enemies tougher, allowing you to retain collectibles when you die in a level, or even reversing the controls), and sometimes just do random, goofy stuff, like giving your characters gigantic, goofy looking heads. You have three slots by default for these tonics at a given time, with a fourth unlockable one. The developers balance the dramatic impact these items have been increasing or lessening your score multiplier for quills at the end of a level based on which ones you have equipped.
I also liked these talking signs who will give you sometimes cryptic hints on how to track down secrets in the overworld if you pay them. They usually manage to give out just enough information to put you on the right track without explicitly ruining the surprise associated with stumbling across a secret item.
The ability to take at least 49 hits in the Impossible Lair (48 beetallion shield hits and, of course, the usual one hit you can take with Laylee attached) without dying might sound excessive, like it would rob that section of the game of most of its difficulty. I'll admit I had similar thoughts initially.
I was wrong.
While I can't say that its name is a precise description of its nature (the Impossible Lair is not ACTUALLY impossible to beat), it can... feel that way at times. The Impossible Lair is rarest of things: a grueling platforming gauntlet that never relies on trickery or cheap gimmicks to challenge the player. Part of the difficulty is down to length: the level in its entirety takes anywhere between 20 - 25 minutes to finish. And, with no checkpoints, if you die, you're sent back to the very beginning of the level and forced to do EVERYTHING over again.
The level also recycles pretty much ever sort of challenge you've encountered throughout the game, usually in its hardest possible form. I compared the level to BotW's Hyrule Castle earlier, but a far more apt comparison, I think, is the endgame level in modern 3D Mario platformers. Starting with Super Mario Galaxy 2, and continuing in some form at least up to Mario Galaxy, 3D iterations of the series have a tradition of capping off the game, once you've fully completed everything else, with a long challenge level, usually devoid of checkpoints and power-ups, where you have to survive a variety of brutal challenges and demonstrate mastery of the game's mechanics. The Impossible Lair is a lot longer than those levels, but it feels similar insofar as it truly feels impossible at first, but through hard work and perseverance, you learn to conquer it and overcome your own limitations as a gamer.
In-between long strings of platforming challenges, you'll periodically face off against Capital B in tricky, but mostly pretty managable boss encounters throughout. The final boss fight against him, while not incredibly hard on its own, is always nerve-wracking because a mistake or two can send you back and force you to go through another twenty-minute slog again to get back to that same point. Even when you finally beat him, you're not home free, as the Impossible Lair itself begins to crumble and there's a final, Super Metroid-esque escape sequence where it's very possible to die just feet from your goal.
Controls-wise, this game feels a lot like DK, except, in this one, you always start out with the helpful companion character by default. With Laylee equipped, Yooka will be able to pull off long, powerful rolls and mid-air jumps that allow him to scale long chasms. Taking a hit and loosing Yooka will obviously lead to gimped performance until you find a mid-level item that summons the bat back to your side. In an interesting twist, when you initially lose Laylee after taking damage, you actually have the opportunity to recover her, as she'll flap around the screen like a maniac for several seconds before disappearing. Of course, taking a hit while grabbing for her will lead to death, so it makes for an interesting risk/reward dynamic.
~ * ~
I played this game on the Nintendo Switch (specifically the Lite, so I can't comment on differences between docked/handheld performance; this game never saw a single moment of TV time), so, as with most third party games on the platform, there are sacrifices made on the altar of that sweet, sweet portability. They're nothing too massive, but they're worth considering. First off, the game runs around... 540p, I believe, in portable mode. This sounds bad, and it is drastically sub-native, but the game's art-style is so stylized and cartoonish that it's honestly not too noticeable in the midst of gameplay (screenshots, obviously, could look better). Performance-wise, the framerate holds up well when you're playing the game without any filters, but some of the more elaborate visual filters tank the framerate in levels. It's a bit disappointing, as it disincentivized me from playing around with the different tonics.
Also worth mentioning is that I stumbled across a few bugs in my time with the game, including one where I memorably went sailing out of the level and into a void of black nothingness. It reminded me of the sort of bugs I've occasionally encountered in Bethesda's open world RPGs.
In conclusion, I was pretty impressed with the game overall. The Switch port could probably have been better optimized, but the game design itself is really solid, and it was a blast to play portably. It's not on the same level as an actual DKC game, such as the Wii U's impressive Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze, but it's a superior indie experience in that style. I'm looking forward to seeing what else Playtonic does with this franchise.
8/10 for the game itself; 7/10 when performance issues with the Switch port are taken into account.
I picked up Sonic Forces digitally yesterday as I had PSN credit to spare. I've had my eye on it for a while as I fancied something akin to Sonic Generations (and it is quite likely that my 'too cool for school' 12 year old will flat refuse to go and watch Sonic this weekend ;-p ).
It is, modern Sonic. That is to say, that like most 'recent' entries in the franchise, the game wants you to play in very specific ways at specific times. It can be initially a little frustrating, but once you become au fait with the way the game wants to work - which doesn't take long - then it can actually be quite fun blazing through the modern stages.
One of the big selling points of the game was the player custom character - this was the main source of reticence on getting the game, as I mostly just wanted Sonic Generations again.
While so far the custom character gameplay isn't as fun, fast or fluid as playing with Sonic, it isn't terrible - and there are thankfully plenty of Sonic stages, so the Blue Blur never really feels absent from the game. The custom character can be created from several anthropomorphised animal species with specific traits and a few basic visual characteristics and colour options. As you progress you unlock more and more (and more and more) clothing options to deck out your character, as well as new weapon options.
The story and cutscenes are very Sonic - in a good way and the music is on the whole fitting, and partially enjoyable.
There are 2 free dlcs available from the store - Super Sonic, who can be enabled to play with in Sonic stages, and 'Episode Shadow' - which is 3 missions and expanded story elements featuring everyone's favourite edgelord as the playable character.
For the £6 I paid, I'm more than happy with it.
PSN: KALofKRYPTON (so you can see how often I don't play anything!)
Twitter: @KALofKRYPTON (at your own risk, I don't care if you're offended)
"Fate: Protects fools, little children, and ships named Enterprise." - Cmdr William T. Riker
I had a go at the demo for this that just released and I found the controls a bit... Weird I guess and took some getting used to.
Never seemed as precise as I wanted it to be but then again I did just come off Divinity (Review is... getting there) which I played exclusively for 2 months so I was a bit rusty with the whole... well everything that isn't pointing and clicking 😅
Not sure if I should be reading that as "I'm trying to write a review... but life," or "I'm composing an epic that'll explore the game design and my feelings about it in excruciating depth."
Anyway, the controls are never quite as pin-perfect as DKC, but they're nice and fluid once you get a feel for the physicality of the moveset.
I kinda left Laylee if I took damage too... it was never worth it to me trying to get that ding bat (She didn't seem to be terribly useful either) and there was always a laylee bell somewhere close by anyway.
She becomes more and more essential as you go on: ESPECIALLY if you try to speedrun levels (which I was a bit sad there didn't seem to be any support for in this game). But, as you point out, it's always a risk to try and go for her, and sometimes the better option is just muscling through to the next bell.
I thought the overworld was rather neat in the impossible lair though... reminded me a bit of old school Zelda and I'd be down for a game expanded upon in the hub world kinda style in fact.
It's the best 2D platformer overworld I've ever encountered. There's definitely a strong Zelda element to it. Hopefully the next core 3D game in the series cuts down on the open space a bit and puts a heavier emphasis on the puzzle elements.
... Oh my god! That's who Capital B was reminding me of! I couldn't put my finger on who exactly when I was playing! 😂
His skin tone is also yellow-ish, like a minion.
@RR529 It doesn't sound like you had too hard of a time with it. It's weird. They're supposed to be accessible, child-friendly platformers, but I've always found every Lego game I've ever played to be weirdly difficult when it comes to figuring out how to progress. Something about the design of these games just doesn't click with my brain.
Anyway, glad you enjoyed your time with it. Probably the best of these games I bothered playing was the Lego version of the SW original trilogy.
@Foxy-Goddess-Scotchy
Modern Sonic really is mostly a love or hate thing I find - with a bit of extra hate left in reserve for 'Sonic Boom'.
Of the modern ones I played, Generations really was the pinnacle of that. Forces carries a lot of that on, but I really think people either get on with modern Sonic or they don't. I'm better with and have a preference for this style of Sonic game above (the much overrated!) Sonic Adventure series, but still prefer the original 4 2D games and Mania.
I'm about a third of the way through the story, with plenty of replayability for the stages. Some are just really nicely done and do a good job of blending the game's mechanics together.
I'll keep going with it - it's light enough an experience as not to detract from Uncharted 4, whenever I actually start that!
@Foxy-Goddess-Scotchy There is a kinda sorta double jump. If you roll off a platform when they're together, you can jump mid-air, which helps when crossing wide chasms. I don't think that's possible when it's just Yooka.
One of the most useful tonics in the game is one that makes Laylee flap around a bit less crazily when you lose her.
Currently Playing: Resident Evil Village: Gold Edition
Right, I've decided to make a concerted effort to go back over the last over the last few pages and make a concerted effort to read reviews people have put up. I know it takes effort to write these and I feel bad I don't always make the effort to read them, mostly because I commonly make brief visits to the site on my phone and don't have time. I'm also guilty of mostly reading reviews I've games I've played myself. So...
Nice review and some great pictures in there. There was lots of story related stuff in there I had no idea about but your thoughts are very similar to other pieces I've read in that so much of the game is so different and interesting but there is so much stuff done badly. It's still a game I want to try but I don't know if that boat has sailed for me now..
Persona 5 is another game from this gen that I feel I ought to play but every time I've hovered my cursor over the purchase button on the store, I've chickened out and gone for something else instead. As such, your thoughts on this demo are a bit lost on me. But the more guys keep talking about this game, the closer I'll come to actually buying it. Maybe.
Again, lots of stuff I've heard from various people about the game. I reckon it would be fun enough to play without VR but it does sound like a whole different experience when it's the sensory overload of VR. As seems to be the recurring theme here, I've never bought myself to take the plunge on PSVR so I'll never get that experience either.
The screenshots you've put in make it look like that game was built for the Switch rather than Xbox. The hub setup sounds very like the Spyro games but the different game styles with side scrolling, top down etc sounds closer to the Crash games! The different ways of getting pages sounds pretty neat too. The game looks pretty cool overall and I kind of wish Sony had another classic platforming game these days.
You've been a busy boy! The only Lego game I've played was part of one of the Lord of the Rings games (was there just one?) and it never really clicked with me. Covering five games of the series in this game sounds pretty fun though and playing as human and dinosaur characters is also a bit different. The mechanic of having to play levels again with different characters is one that frustrates me though. I don't mind it in games like God of War where you revisit areas with new abilities or Metroidvania games that encourage the same so I don't know why I find it more annoying in this sort of game.
Another great looking, fun sounding old school platformer with a ridiculous amount of punnage with characters and locations. I didn't know BotW had a system like this game and it's a cool way of building up to the final boss, rather than having to go through a linear system to get there. The long final level sounds pretty nerve racking having to go through a level that long without dying. The idea of having levels played in two different ways is clever too and probably makes things easier for the devs too! You've potentially sold me on this one overall.
I haven't played any Sonic games outside the Mega Drive games, and then Mania and the other Playstation attempt at the 2D games. But a Sonic game where you don't play as Sonic sounds like sacrilege.
I'm not going to post a long review, but I'll share my thoughts here. I think it's a great game, but it's biggest downfall is possibly the potential that's left unearthed. Aside from some frame drops in the vanilla PS4 version, the game plays really well. Combat is fun, and the more abilities you unlock, the better it gets. And the game can get hard as well; and there are no difficulty settings. One thing I love are the destructible environments. They are next level, or at least on par with the best that's out there today. Not only has nearly every object its own physics applied to it, you can often shoot it apart into many smaller pieces that all act as objects on their own. Even down to the individual planks of a table.
Side missions are very rewarding, and possibly the best content. And that bring me to another point. While I love that the game rewards exploration and side stuff with unique boss fights and the like, the main game pales in comparison. There are no ''true'' boss fights, just the Hiss, the main enemy. Well, there are of course stronger unique variations with their own big health bar, but visually they are all quite alike. Whereas some of the boss fights you encounter during side quests are absolutely bonkers. Some of the last missions are great, the maze comes in mind, but the final stretch is more of the same, which is a shame IMO.
The Lovecraftian horror themes works wonderfully as well. And reading up on all the lore didn't feel bothersome, because it was all very interesting to read for once. Good writing. Though this may be a personal, because the setting and theme quite well resonated with me. I enjoyed the live action TV bits as well, especially those of Dr. Darling, a great actor in that regard. And those short cut-scenes with the board were equally interesting and unsettling.
However, I do feel they can do much more with the setting and themes. For example, the lore behind the Altered Items and Objects of Power were sometimes more interesting than conquering them. Maybe they will explore more in the DLC, maybe in a future sequel. I am interesting in more, because I still have a ton of questions, and that's fine by the way, I much rather have questions unanswered than the game explaining it to me as if I were a toddler (looking at you Kojima...).
@Ralizah Yeah, when it gets busy on screen it can drop if you move quickly around. At least on base PS4, I've heard it's better on Pro. Though fortunately the combat doesn't require very precise controls, so it's kinda forgiving in that regard. I haven't lost a fight because of it.
Yeah, it's cool. It's basically a Metroidvania, and I really like that stuff.
Live action seems to be their thing, doesn't it? Though if it helps, the live action parts are always projected on an in-game TV or on an in-game screen by a projector. And since they use a lot of dated tech, like CRT TVs, and VHS tapes, you're never looking at crisp 1080p footage. So it isn't jarring at all, which I was afraid of. It blends quite well with the rest of the game. Plus, games these days look so good, that it helps to bridge the gap even more. I really liked the performance of the actor, and don't think CG would've been the same.
@Octane It sounds like they did a better job of integrating the live-action stuff than in their previous game.
Having looked at footage, if the base PS4 performed like the Pro framerate-wise, I'd be fine with it. Too bad I'm not spending hundreds of dollars on a system with marginally improved internals.
Honestly, I sort of hope big, demanding games releasing this year on PS4 get upgrade patches ASAP for the next-gen hardware. The Witcher 3 had to be gradually glued and duct-taped together with various patches and updates before it ran well on PS4. Imagine how an unquestionably more demanding title will fare.
@kyleforrester87 I dunno. If you don't have a 4KTV, it seems like the Pro only really boosted a few games noticeably (like Shadow of the Colossus and Bloodborne).
I'm sure the ray tracing will be fine (too technically costly for what it accomplishes, though; you need beefy hardware for that feature to not turn PC games into slideshows), but I hope it has a performance mode. I'm one of those people who will dial down the graphical preset to the lowest possible setting to eke out a more stable framerate (I actually dropped the draw distance in TW3 so much in my PC version that the pop-in reminds me of the Switch version!)
If the rumors about PS5 are true, it'll be sort of like having a PS4 Pro and a next gen console in one.
@Ralizah it’s like the Switch lite. Everyone with one loves it, everyone without it is happy with the standard Switch. Having had a Pro, I wouldn’t go back to the original but it never was an essential upgrade and it’s more or less pointless now if you’re gunna get a PS5 at launch.
Apparently the ray tracing is crazy good in Control.
This morning I ran through Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare: Jackal Assault VR Experience, a free VR game available for PSVR.
Gameplay:
An aerial dogfighting game, it puts you in the cockpit of a "Jackal" (kinda looks like an F-22 Raptor given a bit of a sci-fi touch up, as this is set in space), and consists of exactly one mission.
Controls are simple if you've played anything similar (left stick controls speed, right stick direction, LT fires missiles which can lock on to multiple targets, and RT fires your machine gun cannons).
As mentioned before it consists of one mission. After being launched out of the hangar there's a brief tutorial segment where you'll follow an AI companion through a highlighted path to get to grips with the controls & blow up some debris to get to grips with your weapons systems, however soon dozens of enemy bogeys arrive on the scene & you're able to freely fly around and have to take out as many as you can. At some point you're tasked with taking out a large enemy carrier by shooting it's weak points, and the mission ends.
There's not much more to it than that (it is free, after all), though it does record how many kills you get, so you can try to top your previous record on future playthroughs (you can skip the tutorial section after the first go around, too).
Audio/Visuals:
Despite having my PSVR for nearly a year, this was actually my first full "cockpit" experience, and it was fantastic. The interior of the Jackal & the objects in the area are immaculately detailed, and I didn't notice any fuzziness (even with far off objects) either.
Getting ready to launch from the hangar gave me that same kind of anticipation you get whenever a roller coaster is making it's ascent (especially that first time), and the dogfighting action is absolutely exhilarating in VR in a way that it just isn't in a traditional gaming experience.
Conclusion:
It is unfortunately short (it can be breezed through in 10-15 minutes), but it's great during that time & a real showcase of what can be when a larger studio puts it's weight behind a VR project, and the asking price of free makes it a must own for anyone with a PSVR.
@Thrillho, thanks for taking the time to read through my lengthy reviews! I'll admit I'm prone to skipping some myself from time to time, so it's no biggie if you don't have the time or simply aren't interested.
Currently Playing:
Switch - Blade Strangers
PS4 - Kingdom Hearts III, Tetris Effect (VR)
@Octane Control is one of one of many games that sounds like I’d enjoy it but I’d only get it if I had a lull in games to play and it happened to be on sale at the time.
It does sound like a mixed bag as it’s been GOTY for lots of people but it just hasn’t clicked at all for some people.
@RR529 ha, no problems. I just know that it takes me time to put my thoughts together and it’s other peoples’ responses and thoughts that make it worthwhile. The Yooka-Laylee game is now on my wish list so your review did it’s job!
The one above makes me wish I had PSVR to try out the few missions Ace Combat came with as cockpit/driver’s seat experiences would feel like the best VR experiences as you don’t have to worry about personal locomotion, just focusing on what you’re doing. It is just a shame so few studios have committed to VR projects but it’s completely understandable why.
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