Yooka-Replaylee preview: back by popular demand

Yooka-Laylee was supposed to bring back the good-old days of 3D platformers like Banjo Kazooie, specifically Banjo Kazooie as it was intended to be a love-letter to Rare’s bear and bird.

Unfortunately things didn’t quite pan out as the game was quickly forgotten about, and criticised for some missteps in its development and delivery.

Yooka-Replaylee aims to deliver a better overall experience, and is a remaster of the game that adds quality-of-life improvements and other overall fixes.

I played a demo of Yooka-Replaylee at this year’s Summer Game Fest and as someone who adores a good collectathon I was excited to give it another go. Fortunately it did feel like an improved product.

For starters the graphics have been overhauled, with the world and character models looking cleaner and more lively.

The other changes include a map which wasn’t in the original. This can be used to not just figure out where you are but also keep track of your objectives, definitely an improvement as there are a lot of objectives to complete.

More importantly though the new version of the game adds a fast-travel system to the game, arguably the best addition this updated version brings to the table.

Also included are remixed challenges for those that did play and love the original game and want to pick up the definitive version.

Only the first world/level was available for the demo but it was good fun, as was the original release despite not being the smash-hit many expected it to be. What Yooka-Laylee had in abundance though was charm so it’s nice to see this remaster fully realising the vision.

All in all it definitely feels like an improvement, but the full game will be needed to really see how deep the changes really go. If you're interested in giving it a go for yourself a demo is available now on Steam.