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Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair
Yooka and Laylee are back for a brand new adventure! Get ready for the ultimate challenge - the Impossible Lair! Capital B has created a Hivemind device and used it to enslave the toughest bees in the Royal Stingdom - the Royal Beettalion Guard! Liberate them from chapters filled with only the tastiest 2D platforming trimmings, and take on a 3D o...
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Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair Reviews
Professional reviews from gaming critics
Playtonic has absolutely smashed it with Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair. It builds on the team’s experience with platformers and manages to improve on its predecessor in every way. One of the best platformers I’ve played in years.
While I thoroughly enjoy most video game genres, it’s with the platforming genre that my heart is truly content. I grew up playing platformers, becoming
Even with plenty of superb 2D platformers releasing in recent years, Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair easily belongs alongside the best the generation has to offer thanks to excellent level design and platforming that is evocative of past classics from the genre.
Playtonic Games' debut title, Yooka-Laylee, paid loving homage to formula of 3D platformers of the ‘90s. That makes sense, considering several team members originally worked on Banjo-Kazooie – but sequel takes a much more surprising approach. Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair flips the script, abandoning 3D to deliver a focused, well-paced side-scrolling platformer that feels like a successor to Donkey Kong Country (another game members of Playtonic worked on). However, rather than relying too heavily on trappings of the past, Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair modernizes the 2D platformi...
It’s highly recommended. It’s your bang-for-the-buck game! There are elements that outweigh the bad parts.
Blessed with the charm, wit, and fun factor you’d expect from such a talented group of creators, this should be a guaranteed crowd pleaser.The announcement of Yooka-Laylee in 2015 was met with widespread excitement from certain elements of the gaming community, [...]
Maybe it's for those reasons that the team behind Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair wanted to avoid the eventual juxtapositions, but despite these criticisms, Playtonic and Team17 should be quite happy and proud of building a game that is at least worthy of comparison to some of the quality character platformers we've had as of late. Those games are few and far in between, and enthusiasts of that subgenre should find plenty to enjoy here. But for casual players, I recommend spacing out your play sessions and resist the urge to chuck your controller into your screen.
Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair is a game for those who adore the genre and want something bright, colourful and full of self-referential puns to end a long day at work. However, you have to be able to overlook some game design and quality-of-life flaws that can make the game frustratingly hard.
Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair neatly captures the essence of Yooka-Laylee and reimagines it as a new type of game. It’s a distillation and a simplification, but it’s effective. Then, as its grand finale — a necessary conclusion that looms over the whole game — it turns uncharacteristically punitive. It’s rewarding, that much is undeniable. But it also leaves you feeling like all those hours spent beekeeping never really prepared you for the final challenge. Those bees just afford more leeway over the course of a very long struggle. It’s kind of a buzzkill.
A switch of perspective isn't enough to feel fresh.
It’s funny how a Yooka-Laylee game can find more success based on a change of perspective. I won’t shoot down what the first game tried to accomplish, but I can honestly say I had more fun playing Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair. The controls are more accurate, and the levels give you a better opportunity to find things, rather than running into a particular challenge you couldn’t overcome. Plus, the visuals are astounding, and the sound department does its job admirably. Everythin...
Playtonic tightens up its nostalgic take on platforming and turns its eyes to the future.