Project Ukelele (Banjo-Kazooie spiritual successor)!

[PartridgeSenpai]

Overall though it is feeling like a Banjo game, just with some annoying flaws. Of course, I'm sure Banjo Kazooie has its flaws; I was more forgiving when I was ten years old.

Is there a way to put things in bold on these forums?

As someone who played through the entirity of Banjo-Tooie recently, I can safely assure you that those games had their fair share of control issues as well. Swimming and flying accurately are SO difficult, but luckily you usually never actually need to.

Also, do apply things like italics and bold-typeface, just highlight what you want to apply it to and then click the button above the text-entry box. the one with the B for bold, the one with the i for italics, etc. Hovering over them will give a brief description of what that button does

[Xeogred]

Was hoping for an update from you guys. The temperature is looking a bit lukewarm...

[ESauced]

I've 100% finished the hub world and the first 3 levels. I'm currently wrapping up the fourth level, the casino level.

The first three levels were a lot of fun and I enjoyed 100 percenting them. The casino level is about 40% a decent level and 60% obvious padding. Combine that with the numerous times I have encountered a glitch that actually broke the level and forced me to exit, and I'd say they may have been rushing he 4th level to get the game out on time. I'm hoping that the fifth level isn't similarly half-baked.

Overall the game is fun but somewhat flawed. I would certainly say it is worth buying if you enjoyed Banjo Kazooie. I would really like it if they were to make a sequel that had more levels and worked out some of the kinks. It's great to see a collectathon 3D platformer like his again and I hope we don't have to wait 15 years for the next one.

[CFFJR]

I just haven't had time to play for a few days. I've (mostly) cleared out the first two worlds. Need to get back to it.

I love the game though, and I don't see that changing.

[ESauced]

I've 100 percented all 5 levels and just have the final boss to do. My overall impressions (some gameplay spoilers):

-I really enjoy the general gameplay. The flying controls aren't ideal but they don't require much precision. I rarely found myself frustrated with the platforming. I read some reviews that were critical of the boss fights but I thought they were fine, if maybe a little too much on the easy side.

-I was really looking forward to the Rextro arcade games and the minecart sections and was pretty disappointed with both.

There are a couple decent arcade games, a couple awful ones (the overhead driving one in the first level is the worst) and one I found fun (I think there are other ones that don't earn pagies but I haven't tried them yet) The arcade games just felt uninspired, as though they were created last minute. I would never go back and play them.

The mine cart sections suffer from a confusing control system. You can boost and brake but there is a recharge time which is universal to both, and you can shoot which seems to have its own recharge time. There's no meter for the recharge, and I was never able to tell when they had recharged even after playing 5 of these levels and a boss on the mine cart. I saw reviews complaining about the difficulty of that boss but I didn't have too much trouble with it and actually had more fun with it than the mine cart stages. Other people complained about the difficulty of the levels but I beat all of them in just a few tries; I found them easier than the mine cart stages in Donkey Kong Country Returns. My main issue with them is they weren't fun. It seemed like they were trying to make it feel differently from the donkey long cart stages and I wish they hadn't. Instead of just getting to the end you have to collect the right amount of gems, and I didn't enjoy that mechanic. It would have been better if they had just cribbed from donkey long and had good controls with a simple goal of getting to the end of the track. It's another thing that felt shoved in rather than part of the world. You could pick up the cart and move him anywhere in the level and it wouldn't change anything. I think ideally they should have made a part of the level(s) accessible only by taking the cart there. The one positive I will say is the music on the cart levels is enjoyable.

-I also didn't like the pig quests. They were in several levels and usually boiled down to, get a clue and wander around until you stumble into the right place.

-The levels are fun and generally felt inspired. The casino level was the worst of the bunch; it had a lot of filler and a lot of glitches. But even that level had its charms.

-I always loved transforming in Banjo Kazooie and I loved it again in this game. It actually felt like the transformations got progressively more fun in this game, unlike in Banjo Kazooie where they wildly varied in fun factor(awesome gator followed by defenseless pumpkin). I won't spoil the last transformation but it was my favorite by far.

-You get a pagies for getting all 200 quills in a level but you can equip a powerup that will alert you when you're near them when you're down to the last 10. Because of that powerup I never got frustrated with that pagie, and I actually quite enjoyed roaming the level for quills. It was a good case of updating the gameplay to be a bit more modern while retaining the retro feel.

-I similarly thought using a universal recharging power meter rather than having 100 different items to collect for your powers was a good idea. It can be annoying in Banjo Kazooie to need to fly and not be able to find a good cluster of red feathers. In this game, worst case you need to wait a minute to use your power.

I got kind of into 100 percenting the game because I was enjoying it enough that I was already close but if I were to play it again I would skip all but one of the rextro arcade machines, skip all but the casino mine cart (because I like the boss), and skip all the pig quest pagies. All combined that would be 15 pagies skipped out of 145. I can't think of any others that I found frustrating so that's a pretty good ratio.

Overall, I loved the retro charm and the platforming gameplay, but I felt the added on gameplay elements such as the mine cart and rextro arcade to be lackluster. So, Yooka Laylee suffers a bit from over-ambition, but overall it is a fine game. I'd give it a B. Fingers crossed for 2ka-Laylee

[PartridgeSenpai]

Was hoping for an update from you guys. The temperature is looking a bit lukewarm...

Don't take me not talking about it as me just hiding that I'm playing it that I don't wanna play it. My attention just shifts from thing to thing a lot, so it hasn't been on my schedule for a while

[ElkinFencer10]

My copy just came in the mail yesterday, but I don't know when I'll get around to playing it.

[ZeroAX]

I'm nearing the final boss (just 11 pagies to go) and I can say this game is definitly worth it Xeogred. There are only 5 levels, but I would say that 4/5 are really good (didn't like the ice world). I'll give my full opinion once I'm done with the game

[ZeroAX]

So I've completed this game and here are my thoughts:

I really enjoyed this game. The controls are quite good, and I'm guessing the camera issues must have been fixed with the patches, because I didn't have any issues. The levels are half imaginative half typical for the genre, and I think that's a split I can get down with. 80-90% of the pagies have really fun objectives behind them, with very little repetition in them.

The final boss game me a tough time, and it reminded me of a time in video games when it wasn't necessarily expected of you to be able to beat a game if you just put the time into it. I had to actually put effort, and go back to get all of the heart containers. But also when I went for 100% completion I saw that there were some decently challenging to get pagies, so in general I found this game to be a bit harder than your typical modern game, but without it actually being that hard. Just a decent challenge .

About the negative stuff: at first I didn't like the mine kart challenges, and thus just avoided them on my way to the final boss. But then I tried them again when going for 100% completion, and turns out they're not unfair. A bit challenging, but once you've memorized the level layout it's quite beatable. yeah, remember when we had to do that in games?!? Not sure if it was always a "bad" thing, I mean in this case where the challenge is short and you can repeat it right away, I enjoyed it.

Unfortunately I can't be as forgiving to the game's other HUGE flaw: the fucking arcade challenges.....jeeesus, who thought these were a good idea. I'm sorry, but I've taken part in weekend long hackathons that produced better mini games. It's not just about being fun, these things are downright awefully designed. Especially the casino stage is soooo stupid. you are given an option to boost yourself ahead but if you go forward more than 1 meter from where yooka starts, the game automatically slows you down so you're taken back to the edge of the screen, making sure you never gain an advantage to tackle the mini game's more challenging second half .........WWWHHYYYYY . When has an auto scroller forced you to stay on a very specific part of the screen in a platform game???

There was also an annoying bug in capital cashino where you wouldn't get all of the pagies you unlocked with coins, meaning I couldn't beat the game till 2 days ago, when they released the patch that fixed it on PS4.


Anyway, still a really worthy game and I would love to see a sequel, or just even a DLC stage done for it. Not sure if I like it more than Banjo Kazooie, because the characters and locales in that one were a bit more memorable (probably because the smaller stages made everything take so much more "space" in the game's "world"...not sure if I'm making sense), but I think this is a good modern update on the collectathon genre, and gameplay wise I was really satisfied.

It gets a thumbs up from me

[alienjesus]

So I've completed this game and here are my thoughts:

I really enjoyed this game. The controls are quite good, and I'm guessing the camera issues must have been fixed with the patches, because I didn't have any issues. The levels are half imaginative half typical for the genre, and I think that's a split I can get down with. 80-90% of the pagies have really fun objectives behind them, with very little repetition in them.

The final boss game me a tough time, and it reminded me of a time in video games when it wasn't necessarily expected of you to be able to beat a game if you just put the time into it. I had to actually put effort, and go back to get all of the heart containers. But also when I went for 100% completion I saw that there were some decently challenging to get pagies, so in general I found this game to be a bit harder than your typical modern game, but without it actually being that hard. Just a decent challenge .

About the negative stuff: at first I didn't like the mine kart challenges, and thus just avoided them on my way to the final boss. But then I tried them again when going for 100% completion, and turns out they're not unfair. A bit challenging, but once you've memorized the level layout it's quite beatable. yeah, remember when we had to do that in games?!? Not sure if it was always a "bad" thing, I mean in this case where the challenge is short and you can repeat it right away, I enjoyed it.

Unfortunately I can't be as forgiving to the game's other HUGE flaw: the fucking arcade challenges.....jeeesus, who thought these were a good idea. I'm sorry, but I've taken part in weekend long hackathons that produced better mini games. It's not just about being fun, these things are downright awefully designed. Especially the casino stage is soooo stupid. you are given an option to boost yourself ahead but if you go forward more than 1 meter from where yooka starts, the game automatically slows you down so you're taken back to the edge of the screen, making sure you never gain an advantage to tackle the mini game's more challenging second half .........WWWHHYYYYY . When has an auto scroller forced you to stay on a very specific part of the screen in a platform game???

There was also an annoying bug in capital cashino where you wouldn't get all of the pagies you unlocked with coins, meaning I couldn't beat the game till 2 days ago, when they released the patch that fixed it on PS4.


Anyway, still a really worthy game and I would love to see a sequel, or just even a DLC stage done for it. Not sure if I like it more than Banjo Kazooie, because the characters and locales in that one were a bit more memorable (probably because the smaller stages made everything take so much more "space" in the game's "world"...not sure if I'm making sense), but I think this is a good modern update on the collectathon genre, and gameplay wise I was really satisfied.

It gets a thumbs up from me

Based on this review this game sounds right up my alley. I've been holding on to see if the eventual Switch port gets a physical release, so here's hoping. If not, I'll be grabbing it for PS4 too.