Yooka-Laylee is exactly what we and the Kickstarter fans wanted. A spiritual successor to Banjo-Kazooie/Tooie and that's what we got. It more than delivers on this promise and I honestly don't see what anyone else was expecting, so I don't get why other critics have been so harsh on it…It baffles...

T he 3D platformer genre really came into play during the 32-bit/64-bit era of consoles, with a large number of them falling under the collectathon umbrella. Rare was one of the most well known developers of these at the time with games like Banjo-Kazooie and Donkey Kong 64.

I am grateful Family Friendly Gaming was offered a digital download code for Yooka-Laylee on the Xbox One. This video game is in the style of Banjo-Kazooie. We have a small bat that is on the back of a larger lizard. The level design, concepts, and even the sounds remind me of Banjo-Kazooie.

Where the likes of Doom , Shadow Warrior , and Battle Zone have brought their series' back in recent years - with their core experience very much intact, but now including precisely the kind of refinements and features you'd expect from a modern title - Yooka-Laylee actually remains fairly...

Pure 64-bit platforming; Loads of humour; So much to find and do;

Some mechanical annoyances; Camera issues (classic!);

Yooka-Laylee is a platforming title that goes back to the roots of the 3D platformer in the best way possible. The staff behind Yooka-Laylee are ex-Rare staff and were present during Rare's golden age back on the Nintendo 64 .

Yooka and Laylee are a great duo; Excellent worlds and environments; Challenging and no hand holding; Collectables galore; Lots to explore and lots of replay-ability; It's the most nostalgic modern-game you'll ever play; Excellent soundtrack

The dialogue and writing could have been slightly modernised; Very minor frame rate dips; not often enough to be concerned

contains all the pieces needed for a fun, enjoyable throwback to the 3D collectathons of the 64-bit era. The characters are charming and funny, your set of abilities is vast and entertaining, and four out of five of the worlds are fun playgrounds to explore.

N Sixty Bore

Colourful characters and visuals; Fun platforming; Some nice humour

No direction; Locks progress behind collectibles; Annoying speech sounds; some are unskippable; Quizzes...just...no

Hiccups of this sort don't cripple Yooka-Laylee, but they do scrape the shine off a project that is already a mite too comfortable with the glass ceiling its premise imposes, for all the flurries of fourth-wall-breaking humour.

Yooka-Laylee is built on a foundation of nostalgia and nostalgia is a very powerful emotion. It can often make us long for past experiences or previously owned items, even if those things weren't that great to begin with.

Fun gameplay mechanics; Silly and witty writing; Large and varied worlds; Meaningful progression; Lots to do

Framerate inconsistencies; A couple annoying physics-based puzzles; Occasional camera issues