Yooka-Laylee and Nostalgia | PostMesmeric
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- Опубліковано 27 бер 2018
- The 2010s' return of the 3D collect-a-thon is now upon us, but the first one out the gate was definitely a controversial one. Time to see how Yooka-Laylee chases nostalgia and see if going back to the past is worth the long, rough journey.
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Thank you for vocalizing this, I've long since struggled with my idea of "this takes from Tooie more than Kazooie, and being overly-expansive on Tooie was bad when Tooie was already a fine expansion of Kazooie", and this puts it into a very nice essay that lets me parse those thoughts.
I will say, however, that I found world expansion to be less of "making the worlds too big" and more "making the worlds actually finished". The areas added to Tribalstack Tropics, for instance, felt like actually developed challenges ripped out for no reason. I liked (in theory, less so in practice) the idea of different weather changing the conditions of the Nimbus Race, but felt that needed to be in the base level. Tooie was often very segmented with its challenges, with stuff like Targitzan's Temple being their own self-enclosed things, or the Stony Colosseums, separate from the main platforming conceit of the world, and I feel like stuff like the Rampos Temple and Shovel Knight Quest are fairly decent expansions of "isolated challenges in their own little areas". My problem being that the main part of Tribalstack, as a whole, lacks those kinds of challenges, and travel across it is an absolute chore. I know you do go over this, but I feel like "Tribalstack is the right size at first" holds less true for me, as I tried to do everything I could in the level at its starting size and felt punished for not expanding it at the first opportunity.
I guess what I'm trying to say is I find the 'expanding words' flaw to not be a flaw in that it adds more challenges isolated from a core conceit of a world, but in that it actively discourages exploration UNTIL expansion is complete. I feel that Tribalstack is a much better world after it's expanded, but the main 'central' temple area where Trowser is is just a bore of a place to explore and travel through that it becomes a slog to play at any size. I feel like Yooka Laylee's flaws come from its poor optimization of its movement options before the size of its world or the placement of its collectables.
Though totally agree on the ineffectuality of quills, thank you for pointing that out in a way that really nicely weighed their supposed in-game value with the player's invested value in finding them.
I’m inclined to agree, Tribalstack Tropics might be the most fully realized level in the whole game and is my personal favorite.
a tip: you can watch movies on instaflixxer. I've been using it for watching a lot of movies during the lockdown.
@Blaine Niko definitely, I have been watching on InstaFlixxer for since december myself :)
Man. I’ve never seen an analysis video be so smart, but also so calm and relaxing. Thanks for not going so fast as a lot of channels do.
One of your best videos yet. I really enjoyed looking back over the first 2 banjo games, while remaining somewhat impartial.
Dude, why don't you have more subscribers? I'm serious, this video just happened to pop into my reccomended and it seemed interesting so I decided to give it a try. What I stumbled upon was a channel with some truly awesome video analyses on video games that I care about. You deserve more subscribers, so good job in just earning another one. ;)
Keep up the awesome work.
Thank you. :)
Let's just hope they take the criticism of this game and if they ever make a sequel they can improve on the game play and everything else
I hope they do. This has the potential to be a powerful series. Just takes some reflection on the genre, I'd say.
PostMesmeric i agree.
Nope totally diffrent game
@@turtleanton6539 i know
Crazy as it is, Yooka Laylee is the reason I bought a modern console. Consequentially, the game felt like a failed byproduct of modern gaming, maybe too ambitious for its own good. Despite that, it was enjoyable enough and distinguished from many other games at the time simply by existing as a 3D platformers in the mid-2010’s. Yooka Laylee is important for its historical value and I appreciate it, especially for not totally sucking.
I had a hard time with this game at first, but once the nostalgia kicked in I just couldn't stop playing.
I loved it and I recommend it to anyone who played on N64.
I never got around to Yooka-Laylee when i had it, but my brother and sister did, and neither finished it. Seemed to like the game just fine, but level design, particularly the casino level, was a criticism they both had about the game. Really good video, btw. I think you did a great job in explaining how collect-a-thons worked.
There's just nothing to it. A great game has a little more going on under the surface, but with Y&L, everything you're seeing is the entire experience. There's nothing going on under the surface of what you're looking at. The dialogue is so bland that you differentiate NPCs moreso by their gameplay contributions than their personalities (and the jokes/puns are atrocious).
Thank you for making this. Like, I'm not even a fan of the game (in fact I haven't even played it) but it was obnoxious just how much hate it got to where the criticisms I heard about it weren't really congruent with the amount of sheer bitchiness they were spoken with, so thanks for rationally critiquing this because the way other people were "critiquing" it was not going to help Playtonic at all. I'm wiling to bet it only made them bitter. But hazaa for someone being constructively critical!
A huge factor was the Jon From thing tbh. People hated it just for that
Banjo-Tooie cut back on minor collectibles quite a bit, putting notes, feathers, and eggs in bundles that usually didn't guide the player, but it made up for that by putting in Cheato pages as more major collectibles so there is still quite a bit of collecting. However, Banjo-Tooie also had a warp system in levels, something that would have made the huge levels more navigable.
Having to find Vendi's Play Tonics to unlock them, finding more than 5 Ghost Writers, needing multiple Mollycools to unlock transformations and having to find Trowser multiple times in a level to buy each move would have added to the collectathon experience. I'm fine with having a rechargeable power bar instead of ammo, but flight should have been relegated to flight pads like it was in the Banjo games, as flying can bypass many of the platforming challenges.
Yooka Laylee at least retains some great aspects from the Banjo games with top-notch music and humor. The levels, even though they're massive, are not as annoying or confusing as Rusty Bucket Bay or Grunty Industries. Yooka-Laylee's quizzes are better than Kazooie's or Tooie's quizzes. The frequent use of hoops could be improved by having other waypoints such as flags or just showing the player the goal and leave it to them to figure out how to get there. Even though it could have used more collectibles, there were still some good ones. My issue with Mario Odyssey is there are so many moons in each level that they don't feel as important to collect as they should.
Although Yooka Laylee has some issues, I'm impressed the game turned out as good as it did, considering how small Playtonic is. I hope most of the flaws are because the developers were rusty after not designing 3D collectathons for years. I hope Tooka Laylee will be even better than the Banjo games.
Tooka laylee better be the official name
Thank you for this in-depth view. I don't hate Yooka like many do, and I'm having fun revisiting nostalgia, but I do feel the problems you mention, particularly that collectables feel like a tedious chore. The worlds just feel sort of off to me. I'm not as excited to go explore. Instead, it feels a bit like an obligation. It's interesting that half of Yooka gets nostalgia so right, but at its core in design, it ultimately is too weak.
I never tried Yooka-Laylee because I found myself questioning if it could be 'as good' as Banjo-Kazooie or Tooie. They're games that fit the era well and probably impossible to recreate their feel for today's gamers.
Good points on the nostalgia factor. Perhaps the flaws of games you grow up with just aren't remembered or small enough to ignore from the overall fun and satisfaction.
Part of the problem is that some classic games like Banjo, have an intangible quality of goodness separate from nostalgia, something that can't just be summarized and written as a bullet point.
It's like Final Fantasy VII. Objectively, as a spectator, one might not 'get' why a game mainly starring lego people could be deep and engaging. But then when you actually *play* VII, you'll likely become addicted and before you know it, hours go by. This is the intangible quality of goodness that practically all classic/popular games have. But it's very hard to pin down that feeling and describe it. Especially in an era where so many just watch Twitch streams instead of playing games for themselves.
It’s not as good as either by a long shot, in fact, Yooka suffers tropes of modern gaming Banjo never could have anticipated. But there is a beauty in the resurgence of “genre” the game did. Other 3D platformers since have improved substantially though. I appreciate Yooka Laylee for sort of breaking the ice.
What turned me off from probably ever playing Yooka-Laylee wasn't the lack of collectibles in huge levels, it was those shovelware worthy mini games.
Yooka Laylee was the first game I pirated and as soon as I got to the minecart segment in the ice world I just stopped right there and uninstalled the game lmao
The Rextro sections are awfully tacky but you can enjoy the worlds without messing around with them too much.
While i enjoy Yooka laylee i still competely agree with this video.
I really enjoyed my time with Yooka-Laylee. I hated the meta humor and disliked some of the minigames but I still played it pretty much non-stop until full completion which is kinda rare for me. Having never played Banjo-Kazooie or any of the collect-a-thons on the Nintendo consoles makes this type of genre very rare to me. So I dont think nostalgia plays a big part for my enjoyment of this game. Ratchet & Clank games are probably what I consider best of the genre. And I'm not that much of an expert of the genre to really criticise the game in detail. I can definitely agree with some of the points you made though. The repeated minigames part especially annoyed me because I really didnt like the minecart challenges. I didnt mind the emptiness of the world though and I thought the levels were way too small until they were expanded.
I have to note though that playing this game made me realize how much I really enjoy these types of games. I became much more interested in playing through old classics that I have missed. It's unfortunate though that there is such an overabundance of games that my backlog is already quite substansive. Hat in Time is definitely on the horizon for me and with the potential Spyro Remaster on the way I may finally delve into that series too. And even though I'm a single platform type of gamer, I have become very interested in getting myself a Switch for Mario Odyssee and other Nintendo classics.
I like yooka laylee. May not be as good as banjo or banjo tooie but still good. Would like to see a yooka laylee sequel.
Despite its flaws Yooka Laylee was still one of, if not my favourite game of last year.
This is probably the best analysis I've seen so far of why Y-L failed. Don't take me wrong, I liked the game, but it had some major flaws. In fact, you didn't talk about the minigames... Oh, God, the minigames... Terrible nightmares...
I may be one of those on the "heaps praise" end of the spectrum, but I can still appreciate the criticisms that keep getting brought up. I guess, for lack of a better wording, that said flaws are the difference between a "great" game and an "orgasmically fantastic" one.
Besides the reasons you pointed out, I was disappointed that the characters didn't really feel lived in (and several characters repeating in every world didn't help). And when I discussed this with my friend who's a huge Rare fan, he told me Gregg Mayles, the main writer for Banjo, wasn't involved. It became clear why I felt the characters lacked heart. It was more, "do this because there's a reward" and Banjo's, "I have a funny problem in relation to my character/species... also there's a reward".
Also, the book and expanding levels idea had so much potential. While in BK/BT the entrance being a puzzle didn't mean much other than an explanation for collecting puzzle pieces, they could've done more in YL. For example, by being a book you could have the normal environment (grass, lava, ice) but tie in a children's book or nursery rhyme with that classic Rare twist/parody to add to the story. Then when you expand the world it either finishes that character's story, or adds an additional story involving them.
It was something I only thought of after the fact, but it was another thing they could've done to set itself apart. Not to mention that 17 years later, the same grass/swamp/lava/ice/water themes for worlds are well beyond tired, at least as is. Space is still fresh, and I like the idea of a casino, but that still leaves 3 other worlds that don't do anything different thematically.
I don't want to rob other people of credit, but I think this links back to Gregg not being involved. Gameplay mechanics can influence world design too, but so can story. And if you look back at Tooie, only 3 of the 8 worlds could be categorized under those themes, Mayahem Temple (grass) and Jolly Roger's Lagoon (water), and Hailfire Peaks (fire and ice). But they still offered some kind of twist or variant. Tooie could have been a safe sequel, yet they really pushed the bar. Yooka-Laylee's worlds were too safe that they were boring and predictable. It didn't help that the more interesting levels were not only the last, but also bad. Whether it's the slot machines or trying to fly around.
I hope they take another stab at it. If they look at their competition (Super Mario Odyssey, A Hat in Time) and listen to their criticisms, they could make something really great.
I don't think any game could have revived the collectathon genre better than Mario Odyssey did. To be honest it's kind of weird how few people have talked about the game's incredibly striking similarities to collectathons like kazooie. It's got the same world-based structure, with a very similar split of collectables and use of them, (purple coins = notes, moons = jiggies, yellow coins = eggs/feathers/etc), it's got the same emphasis on exploring expansive worlds and solving minor puzzles, it's got similar puzzle design involving manipulating the world via your moveset, it's even got transformations that change your moveset and let you access different areas. I think the key difference lies in Odyssey's much lower puzzle difficulty and lower emphasis on Catching Em All in comparison to classic collectathons. But as a revival of the genre, I don't think anyone could have asked for more, and I hope nintendo or other companies expands on the central collectathon concept.
It's funny how Odyssey made a huge load of the same mistakes Yooka made. Repeated challenges, challenges not fitting the worlds they're located in, etc. Along with that, Odyssey comes with its own handcrafted problems. Having no reason to return to past worlds if you have collected a handful of scattered, easy to collect Moons, a lack of the element of surprise (you can see everything in one glance, you know what to expect). The game feels more like a huge checklist of unnecessary garbage Moons to collect, with a handful of good ones you'll never have to tackle.
@@Thirteen13551355 I'm honestly a bit surprised more people don't call it out on things like this but I think it gets a free pass because the movement is so good and it makes getting good routes through the game more fun. I always laugh when people say it's because its a kids game when i'm pretty sure as a kid I played much tougher games than odyssey and with 800+ moons I find it hard to believe that they couldn't have made at least 200 of them noteworthy when you don't even need all of them to get everything.
When's Rance?
I never really understood how Broken Age could be considered a "Kickstarter Failure" alongside desasters like Mighty Number Nine. Is there any kind of summary out there about the stuff that makes Broken Age a so called failure?
The short version is, Broken Age released as half the game, and it took over a year to release the second half, and while many agree that the first half was great, the second wasn't that great. Also, a lot of behind the scenes stuff about Tim Schaffer being bad at money.
Broken Age was a project that took longer than promised, had less content than promised, and was kinda... hipster-touchy-feely stuff which was a bit bland. Overall it just wasn't what backers were hoping for, or if it met expectations, it took too long to do so and demonstrated that Double Fine have an awful time managing their schedules or budgets.
I don't expect we will see Psychonauts until several years after its intended release date
I've watched this video twice now and haven't really had the time to properly put forward my thinking on your points as it basically would be a thesis on 3D platformers overall.
I have had problems with Yooka-Laylee, such to the degree that i didn't even finish the game. It seemed like there was a serious problem of diminishing returns that wasn't addressed in the design phase, with levels becoming more and more empty as the game went on. This was saddening to me as i have been awaiting the second coming of 3D platformers basically since Mario Sunshine was done and on the shelf for me. But the thing that bothered me most about the game was how even with all the collectibles that were there there was a kind of disconnect between what i was collecting and what it meant both as it pertained to the progress of the game and the immediacy of the moment. In light of this, i'm glad that A Hat in Time was as good as it was, and now YL and HiT are essentially linked to each other in my mind.
I've often said that YL is the kind of game i'd love to see a sequel to, cause the intent and the drive was there, but they didn't stick the landing. HiT seems to have come around as answer to that. Time taken can make a game better, and sometimes small projects can overcome over-hype.
And the biggest way i think HiT handles this is in the over-expansive levels problems. It was weird to me seeing how HiT was going back to Mario 64's isolated instances of levels to point the player at specific goals. Under performing in this aspect is definitely something worth criticising, and i'm glad you did that in this video. I love DK64 and i used to think that bigger open levels with lots to do was always the answer, and Mario 64's method always kinda bothered me. But over time, it's become apparnt to me that scope does not always aid quality. You can run out of things to cram into a level, and maybe DK64 just happened to hit the right size to stuff to do ratio (as i think the game totally holds up too). So when Yooka Laylee failed to live up to the DK64 standard i started to see the flaw which you point out well. However, I think the expanding level problem was fixed in Hat in Time.
I think YL was an attempt at something bigger, and probably needed more time in development, but in short, i definitely think people are thinking about the 3D platformer again, and even if YL turned some people away from them i'm glad HiT came up and showed everyone how it can be done.
I too wish Playtonic would take these criticisms to heart. I don't hate this game. I just wish it was better.
23:10 when have people criticized sonic 3 and knuckles?
There's a surprising amount of anti-Sonic sentiment these days, especially from those who never grew up with the series. I've seen plenty of critics say that "Sonic was never good", which in my opinion, is highly debatable.
@@PostMesmeric I wasn't expecting a reply honestly. I always assumed the genesis classics were at least considered "good" from outside the community. I didn't realize even THEY were being held under scrutiny.
I thought it was Ok, didnt get as lost as I got in tooie..... plus they didn't have the budget nintendo used to give them.
Yooka-Laylee is REALLY good. I fear people's unfair reception of it will help kill the genre again.
A problem with Yooka-Laylee is that it is a pastiche of Banjo Kazooie rather than something that, reskinned, would ever seriously be called Banjo Threeie. Rare games might sometimes pastiche other genres/mediums but they're not pastiches or reskins of their own previous work. The gameplay of Nuts and Bolts might require too much hard work for my liking but the level design and art style feel wholly fresh whilst also feeling like a real, textured, world with some seriously great lighting. They're not called 'Rare' for nothing. They kind of make rarities, not formulas.
I think that's expecting too much out of the game. And it does feel like those high expectations made people see the game more harshly, because they set themselves up for disappointment. It very much feels like a "first game in the series" rather than "the completion of an epic trilogy".
You would expect that the developers had had fifteen years to at least reflect on and improve the style pioneered in the Banjo titles. I don’t know it ever needed to be a Banjo Threeie but at the least it needed to live up to where the original titles succeeded.
>Freedom Planet has better level design & pacing than S3&K
I can't sit by & let this go un-noticed. This is absolutely not true. FP is an absolute SLOG to get through.
Just asking but have you seen mauler's critique of yooka laylee?
Yes.
I did have fun with Yooka Laylee, but I definitely ran into a lot of frustration about these design failings while playing it several times, and I couldn't complete it. A Hat in Time scratched the collectathon itch much better by being much more focused.
I love Kazooie and Tooie but found Yooka boring and frustrating for the most part.
A Hat in Time is a far better throwback to the platformer and collectathon games.
16:50
isn't backtracking bad thought?
This is that game that they cut out JonTron or something right
That's an incredibly minimizing way to describe an out-of-the-way grunt from a character stuck in a Porta-Potty. There's a whole game beyond that half-second.
14:24 I think the reason why 3D platformers are not so popular is the simple reason because i don,t think that many people like the idea of playing as wacky cartoon or at least not with out some specific flavor to it
Second why Collect-a-thon ''fell out of favor'' is perhaps that there where never than many to begin with
I mean there are only 4 Collect-a-thons (kaz tooi dk64 rocket) on the N64 and the reason why i think people like them is not that they ar Collect-a-thons but because they where the best of that generation (again i don't think people like the idea of playing as silly cartoon character)
You keep using footage of Super Mario Galaxy to "prove" that Nintendo is moving away from collect-a-thons even though they recently released at least I think they did a trailer of Super Mario Odyssey. Has this release changed anything?
Also, the only reason Galaxy was linear was because the Wiimote made 3d Mario games terrible because you couldn't do anything with the camera so they had to simplify the level design.
Check the date of this video
First: In your face internet.I did nothing
Yooka Laylee is fucking dire. And it’s not because it’s ‘retro’. It’s because it’s just straight up bad. It would have been bad on the N64.
Lol why you defining nostalgia? Zzzzz
I got it recently on PSN for $10 in 2019 and it still plays like shit. Horrid controls, worse than super lucky tales