2019’s Most Perfectly Punishing Platformer: A ‘Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair’ Review
Among all of its flaws and triumphs, Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair is a complete experience that doesn’t leave a stone unturned. Its levels are lengthy, packed with secrets and challenges, and its overworld is filled with charming secondary characters, puzzles and mysteries of its own. If there was any concern that the transition to a 2D platformer meant a smaller or somehow lesser experience, Impossible Lair works at every turn to dispel the notion. Not only is Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Layer the best platformer since Celeste, it’s one of the most complete and satisfying adventures of the year.
Impossible Lair kicks off by throwing Yooka and Laylee right into the pit against Capital B, the buzzing villain who makes a return for the second iteration of the series. It isn’t abundantly clear at the time, but this fight is really the centerpoint for everything Yooka and Laylee are working toward throughout the game. I was completely out of my element, and Capital B made work of me in less than a minute. Not knowing this at the time, this is the first opportunity the game gives you to take down the game’s final mission: Capital B and his “Impossible Lair.” Soon after, the game made it clear that I could return to the Impossible Lair at any time. Though, with the help of some rescued “Royal Beettalion” members, I could return to the Impossible Lair with extra protection. The catch, of course, is that the members of the Beettalion have been kidnapped by Capital B and can only be recovered by traversing the dozens of maps and completing levels.
Each level in Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair contains hundreds of quills, which can be spent on unlocking useful skills called “tonics,” opening up new avenues to alternate styled levels, and five coins that can be spent on opening up new territories. Collection isn’t mandatory in Impossible Lair in the same way that beating levels isn’t mandatory, either. The game leaned heavily into getting me to want to collect these items, not just because they had a tendency to be helpful, but also because it really fleshed out the experience. For instance, there is a particular tonic that allowed me to play in “Gameboy” styled visuals, as well as one that allowed me to play with a film noir filter. And when I wasn’t having fun goofing off with the stylistic tonics, I was busy giving Yooka and Laylee some extra skills, like the ability to slow down time a few instances per level to help navigate the tough array of challenges.
In a year where a new From Software game came out in Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice (which ignited conversation about difficult in games), it should be pretty alarming that Impossible Lair is by far the most difficult game I have played all year. Even for platforming experts, the levels can range from fairly easy to mind-breakingly difficult – especially if you, like me, try to collect as much as you can. There isn’t a lot of rhyme or reason for when the game shifts into high-gear difficulty, and those instances often serve as the sole reason to put down Impossible Lair. On top of that, the movement just isn’t complex enough to warrant some of its more difficult moments. Yooka and Laylee have a couple of different moves at their disposal, including a roll, a jump, a rarely used ground pound, and a mid-air spin. The spin is the most frustrating of the bunch, as it’s frequently required and just barely better than jumping without it at all. With the controls pairing the jump button next to the spin/roll button, I found the base of my thumb being practically abused by the end of hour-long sessions and not once did the spin ever feel satisfying to pull off successfully. Slightly mistimed mid-air spin jumps can lead to devastating deaths, especially inside of the Impossible Lair which doesn’t afford many mistakes.
Even in the face of nonsensical difficulty spikes, the level design is just a shade weaker than its primary influence in Donkey Kong Country. Each level pops with color and enjoys the talent of another David Wise and Grant Kirkhope score. Each moment in the game’s OST is an absolute delight, and it can’t be overstated how important it was during some of Impossible Lair’s lengthier sequences. With just about every level comes an alternative state, which can range from the already beaten level now being frozen over or flooded with water. It’s a testament to the design that, even when carefully inspected, the levels feel totally different. Still, each state of the level offers up another member of the Beettalion, which proved much more useful than I could have possibly surmised early in the game.
There will undoubtedly be some people who will not have the patience or desire to stick out the game’s ultimate experience: The Impossible Lair. At first glance, it’s a handful of rounds with Capital B – all of which are about five minutes in length – and several themed platforming challenges in between. The catch is that you need to beat it all at once, which I timed at anywhere between half an hour to a full hour, based on how many breaths I’d need to take in between sequences. There are no checkpoints, and in an extremely curious design choice, tonics are unavailable to aid Yooka and Laylee through the sequence. Still, the Beettalion is there to help, and by the end of my experience I had collected nearly all of the 48 available. That meant that for each attempt at the Impossible Lair, I was able to take 48 hits and still complete the game and take down Capital B once and for all.
Even with the help of the Beettalion, Capital B took me over a dozen tries and a handful of hours to bring down. The rest of the experience was about a dozen or so hours long, so a good chunk of my total playtime was spent trying to beat Impossible Lair’s ultimate experience. Oddly enough, it becomes almost a game within a game. Outside of the Beettalion, none of the developed skills or tonics carry over into the final area. I was simultaneously building toward this final fight while also being hilariously unprepared for it. Still, by the time I had taken the Impossible Lair down once and for all, it stood out to me as the most satisfying and rewarding moment I’d had in video games all year. This is largely because of the stellar design of the Impossible Lair, which featured many of the game’s most difficult challenges all in one spot. Even with the disappointing set of moves at Yooka and Laylee’s disposal, the platforming involved is nearly unmatched. The tension of escaping a speeding rocket while also climbing a vertical, spider bearing web felt like an ode to old-school platformer design, where the end result almost always ended in a sigh of defeat or a fist pump in success.
Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair also has a 2.5D overworld filled with the same quirky characters as its predecessor. The sense of humor is less forced and the world feels much more comfortable in its own skin than it previously did. Impossible Lair gets the benefit of being a sequel, where a world has already been established and now we get to explore the fun side of it.
One of my favorite gags in the game is the constant bullying that Yooka and Laylee subject the game’s various NPCs in order to open up alternate level states. For instance, a mustached wooden crate is sick of all of his friends being used and shattered by Yooka and Laylee, and refuses to be subjected to the same torture. Instead, Yooka and Laylee have to find a different box, this one named “Frank.” When they push Frank the Crate over a button (which helps procure the alternate level), he shatters in front of the mustached crate, who then jumps onto the button as a way of “fulfilling Frank’s last wish,” totally unknowing that he was now helping Yooka and Laylee.
Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair can be all at once frustrating, captivating, and fun to play. When it’s clicking on all cylinders, it’s one of the most rewarding games of the year. There are some unfortunate design choices, like the inability to take the tonics I worked hard for into the game’s ultimate experience and lack of interesting movement techniques. These issues keep the game from being as accomplished as some of the game’s it was clearly influenced by, like the Donkey Kong Country franchise. Still, Impossible Lair is a challenging and rewarding experience that feels infinitely more complete than its predecessor.
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Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair is one of the most rewarding games of the year, and certainly one of the best the genre has put forward all generation.
