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

Time has not been kind to 3D platformers. Unless you're a plumber in a red hat you don't find 3D platformers on consoles these days, and if you do it's probably best to avoid them like a plague.

Final boss battle is quite cool | It's fun testing out the various elemental effects when playing as Yooka | The humour is right on point..

..; until it it makes fun of the games industry and makes the very same mistakes | The voices will drive you up the wall at some point | A game that's stuck in the 90s era | Controls are floaty | Camera is twitchy

Yooka-Laylee isn't Banjo-Kazooie in name, but after all these years, Playtonic's game does justice to Rare's classic – and the legendary N64 era of 3D platforming on the whole. True, the tribute is maybe a little too exacting at times. The occasional clunky mechanics and camera issues of the past haven't been fully resolved, and the giant text and garish menus could have stayed in the '90s, thank you very much. But that all comes with the complete package here, and the overall impression is a very warm and pleasant memory of how simple, straightforward, and incredibly fun the 3D platformer can be. Yooka-Laylee isn't revolutionary or even really evolutionary in any significant way, but that's no knock against a game this charming and delightful. Plus, for Nintendo fans, it's sure to be an ideal fit for the Switch when that version debuts sometime later this year.

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

Some mechanical annoyances; Camera issues (classic!);

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

Some mechanical annoyances; Camera issues (classic!);

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...

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.