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Yooka-Laylee is getting a new lease on life. The folks at Playtonic are remastering the game and releasing it afresh as Yooka-Replaylee. It will feature overhauled graphics, improved performance, and gameplay tweaks throughout to make it the definitive version of the game. Take a look at it in this trailer:
Fans of composers Grant Kirkhope and David Wise, who put together the soundtrack for the original Yooka-Laylee, will likely be interested to hear that the score is being redone with a live orchestra this time around. Here’s a bit more about what fans can expect from Yooka-Replaylee:
• MORE BEAUTIFUL THAN EVER – With an art and animations overhaul and enhanced performance and resolution, the favourite buddy duo has never looked or moved better.
• NEW AND IMPROVED CHALLENGES – Improvements to existing in-game challenges and many entirely new challenges to discover and undertake!
• NEW COLLECTIBLE CURRENCY – Capital B’s inept minions have dropped their hard-earned coins all over the place. Collect the official currency of the Hivory Towers to spend on video games’ most beloved sentient vending machine.
• NAVIGATING THE WORLD – Now you can get lost in the game, not in the world! A brand-new world map and challenges tracker helps you know where you are and what needs to be done. Hooray!
• VENDI HAS PLENTY TO OFFER – Tonics are back with all new flavours! With the option to equip multiple game-changing enhancements, you can truly customise your playstyle. And as if that wasn’t enough, Vendi has new lines of merchandise for the modern fashionable adventurer.
• REVISED CONTROLS & CAMERA – A new tweaked move set allows you to combine moves more fluidly while the new camera controls makes framing the action a breeze.
• A DREAMY ORCHESTRAL SOUNDTRACK – The original score from famed video game composers Grant Kirkhope (Banjo-Kazooie) and David Wise (Donkey Kong Country) returns but as a beautifully arranged orchestral score. Now seriously, clean out those ears.
Alas, there’s no release date, but perhaps the larger question for Nintendo fans is whether or not this game will be coming to Switch. Given the original game came out on last-gen’s hardware (PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, to be specific), and this version is bragging about the updated visuals, it seems unlikely the current iteration of Switch will be a suitable landing pad for Yooka-Replaylee. When asked about coming to Switch, Playtonic said the following when asked by Nintendo Life: “We have nothing more to announce at this time, stay tuned for more updates.”
That said, with word of a Switch successor coming soon, odds are good that Yooka-Replaylee will probably wind up on the next Nintendo system. As we all sit and wonder, why not sound off with your opinion down below in the comments?
Source: Playtonic Press Release
I’m not exactly sold on HD remasters of already-HD games, but there was a lot to love in Yooka-Laylee. A map and challenges tracker are promising additions. If they’ve tightened up some of the jankier bits of gameplay, this could plausibly be worth a double-dip.
I’d rather have got those tweaks in a patch rather than buy the game again to finance fancier foliage and plain white sunbeams, but we don’t live in a buy-once world anymore.