[PC] [PS4] [ONE] [SW] Yooka-Laylee

[christian]

http://www.playtonicgames.com/games/yooka-laylee/

U5rucXQ.jpg (308.62 KiB) Viewed 2254 times

Kickstarter - https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/pl ... rare-vival

[christian]

Double Take: You Always Wanted Yooka-Laylee; The Industry Tried to Tell You Different - http://nintendoenthusiast.com/article/d ... different/

So what took so long for the 3D platformer akin to the N64 and PS1 days to return?

In my opinion, it’s simple: The “Industry” told you that you didn’t want that sort of game anymore.

Yooka-Laylee is a game changer in a lot of ways, and the main one in my opinion is that it’s showing the gaming industry that maybe they aren’t quite in tune with fans as they thought they were: we never wanted 3D platformers to go away.

Banjo-Kazooie, Total Annihilation, Wing Commander, Baldur's Gate, Fallout, Maniac Mansion, Megaman, Planescape: Torment, Elite, Ultima, etc. Because these games, and the genres they represent, struggled to set the world on fire in a post-GTA III / post-Halo industry, people imagine that they disappeared. Or that the original games had even been lost, sealed up forever in some kind of a nether world. Their only hope for revival -- Kickstarter.

But was it the industry that told us that we didn't want 3D platformers anymore? No, we told the industry that we didn't when we universally embraced the new FPS and open-world games. And to be honest, I'm not all that interested in playing a new 3D platformer. The N64's library is quite enough for me, thank you very much.

More interesting to me than the genre is their aesthetic, which Yooka-Laylee seems to be magnificently delivering on. I love Rare's joyful aesthetic style, and I'm glad to see more of it, in whatever form it takes. I'd like to see it branch out beyond their 3D platformers, but for the life of me, I can't think of a better pairing of aesthetic to genre than what they did here. So I don't even know if it's possible to separate the two. Katamari Damashii is the closest game I can think up right now that nearly pulls it off, but even that is essentially a 3D platformer / collect-a-thon. I'm at a loss.

[christian]

By the way, I loved Super Mario 3D World. But part of what made that game so great was the co-op multiplayer, which took place on fairly constrained courses. I don't see anything like that working as well here with Yooka-Laylee. And yet their Kickstarter promises all these multiplayer versus modes that don't make any sense to me. Is that really what people want? Being able to run around and shoot each other like in Banjo-Tooie and DK64? (Dare I say, like Call of Duty?) Well, now we know that it isn't always the publishers who are pushing for this kind of additional, (in my opinion) throwaway content. Would that they'd strike that goal out completely, and focus on getting an orchestral score. Now there's an essential goal.

[christian]

Don't Hate On 3D Platformers Just Because Yooka-Laylee Didn't Deliver - https://waypoint.vice.com/en_us/article ... nt-deliver

My biggest fear with Yooka-Laylee is the possible backlash, that developers will see a failed attempt at a 3D platformer, throw up their hands, and declare that the genre is dead. That it was doomed to be an artifact of the mid-to-late-90s, a genre that Mario 64 started and dominated, with a few hits along the way. That they'll shrug noncommittally, saying "It's a lost cause, and it deserves to be, because most of those old games kind of sucked anyway."

It's easy to get enthusiastic over a Kickstarter pitch. Actually playing the result is another story.