As a spiritual successor to 3D platformer Banjo-Kazooie, Yooka-Laylee really does capture the cheeky personality of its predecessor. It doesn't introduce many new ideas, but it does rework the existing formula, creating a far less linear version of the N64 collectathon. Ultimately, though, bloated levels and a largely uncooperative camera keep Yooka-Laylee from being more than just a nostalgia trip.
The adventure begins when corporate president Capital B steals a book's golden pages, called Pagies, from a lizard and bat named Yooka and Laylee. The pair figure that the Pagies must be valuable if someone would bother to steal them, so of course they decide to enter Capital B's building to get them back. That hub area, Hivory Towers, splits into five themed worlds with a variety of collectibles to find, including Pagies, currency-like Quills, and powerups.
Yooka-Laylee is about finding collectibles first and foremost, and platforming takes somewhat of a backseat. You can find Quills out in the open, and you unlock Pagies by completing a variety of tasks, from solving simple puzzles to playing a round of golf to, of course, platforming. The focus on a wide range of activities instead of just platforming is actually a good thing, because the camera has a nasty habit of getting in your way when you're exploring levels. It locks into place at seemingly random points and even swings wildly in tough spots, making the platforming challenges that are there terribly frustrating and time-consuming. When most of your time goes toward the collectibles that are the least fun to get, that's a problem. Once I unlocked the ability to fly for limited periods of time, I started cheating to completely get around tricky platforming sections. However, it's worth noting that swimming doesn't suck in Yooka-Laylee, and I didn't dread underwater sections the way I do in Banjo-Kazooie. Movement in water is quick and easy, so exploring in and around water isn't a chore.
I most consistently enjoyed the hub world, where the powerup collectibles are hidden in clever spots and the Pagies are locked behind challenging puzzles that make good use of the moves and techniques you pick up in the discrete worlds. Those worlds also have their strong puzzles, but they're less consistent.
There are only five levels, none of which have a terribly original theme. The first world is "tribal"-themed, for example, which was also the case in both Banjo-Kazooie and -Tooie. The casino level is the weakest of the five; it introduces a new kind of collectible that can be exchanged for Pagies, adding an unnecessary layer to the collecting process. But the rest of the levels lay out their collectibles well, and finding all 200 Quills in a level always gave me a sense of pride.
In contrast to the established Banjo formula, each of the levels can be expanded once, and you can visit each of them in pretty much any order you want. That open structure allows you to control the pace of the adventure since you don't have to stay stuck on a Pagie or puzzle--you can move on to another world where you might learn a move or strategy that will help you elsewhere. That also makes returning to a world you've already visited more rewarding. When you've found 20 of the 25 Pagies in a world and are sure there was nothing else you could possibly do to find the rest, coming back to that area with fresh eyes and seeing what you didn't before is its own special kind of achievement.
The other update to the Banjo formula--being able to expand worlds--is less successful. Each of the base worlds is clearly incomplete, but expanding them doesn't necessarily improve them. Because most of them have additions in multiple areas and directions, their layouts are hard to follow, and just figuring out where you haven't been yet can be tedious. They're hard to parse in the same way that N64-era levels were because they're open-ish but sectioned off in unnatural places with no landmarks or visual aid to guide you. The snow level in particular is broken up into a bunch of areas that connect in bizarre ways, and even after several hours exploring it, I'm not entirely sure which caves connect to which parts.
Much like the level design itself, the boss fights in each world feel stale and outdated. Each boss up through the end of the game follows a very simple structure: you figure out their attack strategy, hit them a couple times until they change up that strategy, and repeat maybe three times until they're dead. But since you don't need all the Pagies to actually beat the game, these bosses are as optional as any other individual Pagie.
Coming back to a level with fresh eyes and seeing what you didn't before is its own special kind of achievement.
20 hours of hunting collectibles and fighting simple bosses later, I had found the bare minimum amount of Pagies necessary to move on to the end of the game and couldn't justify finding any more than that. The ones I hadn't yet collected were not worth either the time it would take or the frustration I'd have to endure to get them.
I stayed as long as I did because of my own nostalgia. Although there aren't references outright, Yooka-Laylee has plenty of Banjo parallels. The lizard-and-bat duo are nearly identical in personality to Banjo and Kazooie, with Laylee making the majority of the snarky comments and Yooka being the voice of reason. On top of that, the collectibles and moves are very similar in function to their counterparts in the Banjo games, and the music features many of the same familiar motifs. But Yooka-Laylee also lacks new ideas, and the twists it introduces aren't entirely successful.
Ultimately, Yooka-Laylee's best and worst aspects come directly from its predecessor. Despite attempts at modernizing the formula, its style of gameplay is still outdated, and it doesn't stay challenging or interesting for long as a result. But if you're looking for a faithful return to the Banjo-Kazooie formula, Yooka-Laylee certainly delivers--from the font to the music to the wealth of collectibles, it's worthy of the title of spiritual successor.
You can pretty much count the number of PlayStation games from 1996 that actually stand the test of time on a single hand, but Parappa the Rapper is a particularly egregious example of a game that had a deep problem even back then: it's a rhythm game that can't keep rhythm.
At their worst, broken games are a valuable lesson in what not to do. But at their best, you get games that overcome major technical shortcomings to deliver exceptional experiences despite their flaws. Parappa the Rapper is almost--almost--in that latter category. After all, it's difficult to put down a game about a rapping dog trying to win the affection of an anthropomorphic sunflower by learning karate from a giant onion, getting his driver's license from a moose, and nearly screwing up his date with her because he can't find a toilet to pee in.
While Parappa and the world he inhabits are amusing, the game he stars in is frustrating to play. The foundation of the game is a call-and-response system: in each stage Parappa is paired with a wacky character with some wisdom to impart via the power of hip-hop. The stage master will drop a silly, nonsense rhyme, each syllable of which corresponds to a timed button press on the controller. You need to copy the pattern and respond with a rhyme of your own.
It's a simple enough premise, but as with the original, the remastered version of Parappa the Rapper struggles to find its rhythm. Trying to match button presses exactly with what you see on screen will result in failure. What ultimately works is hitting the syllables in some invisible sweet spot that seems to be unique to each master, which means gameplay feels more predicated on luck than rhythm. Regardless, even when Parappa's rhymes do play out on time, he sounds like a dying Siri.
The kicker is that the game has an Easy mode that eases the odd and strict timing for each note, but--in another one of those touches that could only have come from the mid-'90s--only the first three stages of the game are playable when you knock the difficulty down, and your scores aren't saved. Oddly, the game's original cutscenes remain untouched--they're presented in tiny boxes, in their original low-res form.
It's an awful rhythm game. All the more awful because I was compelled to continue playing despite its obvious flaws.
Despite its issues, Parappa the Rapper has an infectious spirit. Its bright and unmistakable aesthetic lends the game an undeniable charm, especially since the remaster smooths out the original's jagged pixels. The tonal weirdness makes its craziest moments unforgettable. The raps are Sesame Street levels of rudimentary yet silly enough to be memorable, and the constant repetition of failing and retrying stages hammers them into your brain like musical nails.
The linchpin is the game's attitude. Parappa himself is a loser with no money or prospects who spends his entire day hanging out with his loser friends. He's also constantly being shown up by the very rich and very lame Joe Chin, who shows up in every cutscene to demonstrate how much better he is. And yet, every time the chips are down, Parappa springs up, screams "I gotta believe!" and does something crazy to match Joe with the sheer size of his heart. Parappa is the G-rated version of 8 Mile's B-Rabbit, and his willingness to overcome every obstacle in his silly life with the power of belief is so charming, it's easy to forget you're getting torn apart on the scoreboard.
There's a generation of gamers who will find Parappa the Rapper Remastered validates all their happiest memories watching Parappa kicking and spinning with Chop Chop Master Onion again, more vibrant and colorful than ever before. But there will come a point when they have to confront how incongruous the aggravating gameplay is with how delightful everything else around it is. The aesthetics and vibe are still unlike anything else out there, and they're still worth the hassle. But the greatest trick Parappa the Rapper ever pulled was convincing the world it's not a broken game.
No comments:
Post a Comment