Represents something of a course-correction. Challenging 2D platforming, impressive design risks and an ace soundtrack ensure Yooka Laylee has been transformed into something impossibly fair!
Kudos on the impossible.
I once said of the original Yooka Laylee that it was 'utterly devoid of personality with an alien's understanding of Banjo's constituent elements and completing it as a backer was an operation in heartbreak.' Lovely tempered stuff.
My thoughts on Yooka Laylee, on reflection, are that it was impossibly fair... extraordinarily fine. Movement and platforming felt great. I wasn't a fan of the engine and presentation, but the soundtrack kept me sane. The compulsion to collect pushed me forward, but the repeating characters and overall clunkiness dragged it all down. It was fine. I feel the same about it as I do the launch No Man's Sky. Both compulsive to play at the time, but not necessarily in the most flattering way.
I don't know. This seems like a step back somehow.
So when The Impossible Lair was impossibly announced the same day I completed Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze with that same engine on show, I couldn't quite believe what I was seeing. Fool me once, shame on me. Fool me twice, shame on Lay-me. And is that Foodemic-style animation of the Queen bee? Isn't 2D a step back? Why does this exist? There was only one thing that was going to be impossible - forcing this into my hands. Turns out just improbable.
Apologies for doubting you so vociferously, Playtonic. Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair is inconceivably, unbelievably and impossibly fair given its predecessor. It takes design risks, it's challenging, flirts with being charming and mechanically compares well with the best of Kong's 2D platformer legacy.
Surprisingly not.
It's the play(tonic)ful design that really saves it from it from damning comparisons. Starting you on the impossible lair level - a level that lives up to its name - is a masterstroke. Having other levels generate you one more hit point and that level available to try again anytime - perfect. The overworld is a veritable hive of activity. Dispensing of the 2D perspective, the countless places to explore and secrets to find make the overworld the highlight of the entire experience. It's far and away superior to a level select screen at the very least and pure joy at most. Finally, the flirted-with mechanic of expanding levels in the original Laylee production is finally realised properly with the ability to elementally (and otherwise) transform levels completely and utterly in the overworld - a massive improvement that effectively doubles the level count.
The levels themselves have a great flow and can be dastardly challenging to complete on a completionist non-surface level. Almost too much for me, in fact. Let alone the challenge posed by the titular impossible lair level and the daunting proposition of completing it from the start.The use of Laylee as a recatchable one-hit shield nicely offsets any frustration whilst never making things too easy. In my time with it, I don't think the design ever reached the highs of my experience with Tropical Freeze, but one, that's unfairly comparing it to the best of the best, and two, I think there's plenty of space for more well-designed 2D platformers out there - especially divorced from Nintendo systems.
Trancing in the moonlight.
My main frustrations? That engine is STILL here! It's not abjectly horrible, but I'm no fan of it's simplistic Unity (nothing against it specifically) 3D look. If its a hangover of the intention to evoke the look of N64 games in the original, I don't think it succeeded then or now. Whilst we're now free of the minigame atrocities of the first game, I feel like I'm still subjected to the new challenge rooms epitomising the worst of Impossible Lair's presentation instead. Also, reading about Playtonic's potential plans for further genre diversification for the bat and lizard duo and the rest of the gang, all I can think to say is 'stop.' I don't think the characters here made a splash enough to warrant appearing in a second game, let alone a racing game where characters are yet more important. They're just not memorable. I'd love to see Playtonic potentially reset and try something new. Although, I know that's a big ask in a tough gaming market.
The soundtrack is everything you'd hope for, of course. It's Grant Kirkhope and David Wise, is it not? If these past two games have got anything right, it's in nailing their music. If the overall games matched the quality of their music, we'd be looking at absolute year highlights. We'll have to settle for a surprise rise in quality for Lair.
Kill me.
As it stands, Impossible Lair represents something of a course-correction. Challenging 2D platforming, impressive design risks and an ace soundtrack elevate a title otherwise sullied by some of its hangover presentation and the same Yooka Laylee name and characters. Still, like its overworld's transformable levels, Yooka Laylee itself appears to have impossibly pulled off a transformation from its initial lacklustre outing into something impossibly fair. All is forgiven, you bear and bird stand-ins, but perhaps let's leave it there shall we?
