I was fairly surprised to see Yooka-Replaylee because I honestly didn’t think it was something anyone wanted. Despite what some storefronts might suggest, Yooka-Laylee wasn’t particularly well-received when it launched back in 2017—sitting at an average of 68 on Metacritic. What’s even weirder is that Playtonic seemed to have found its footing with the characters in the actually beloved Yooka Laylee and the Impossible Lair, so why they would dip back into this poisoned well is beyond me.
I genuinely wanted to believe in Yooka-Replaylee because I really wanted to believe in Yooka Laylee. The style of old-school Rare collectathon games is a bit of a lost art, and I really wanted to see a studio of former Rare developers bring it back to the mainstream. But after playing both the original Yooka Laylee and this updated re-release, I think we just need to conclude—it’s simply not a very good game.
In order to see if Playtonic really did the required work to fix... Read more