Yooka Laylee’s “Impossible Lair” is the Hardest Boss You’ll Face All Year
Yooka Laylee and the Impossible Lair isn’t always a hard game. Just getting from the beginning to the end of a world is pretty simple, especially when you consider the available tonics that can help with things like additional checkpoints and faster climbing. But by the time you reach the game’s climax – a half-hour long boss fight that involves four hectic battles with Capital B, including various platorming challenges – the challenge cranks up a few notches. In a year that featured Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, a game that gave way to a month long discussion about game difficulty, as well as the intimidating and ever-present Mr. X in Resident Evil 2, Capital B and the Impossible Lair stand alone as the most difficult boss fight of the year. Let’s dig into his boss design, which will stand alone as the most satisfying video game moment thus far in 2019
It takes all of five minutes before the game throws you into the Impossible Lair for the first time. If you’re anything like me, your first attempt won’t be a very good one. The game teases what is to come by showing you a percentage of your best attempt, which is likely to be well below 5% on the first try. The fun thing about this is that you actually can beat the Impossible Lair on the first try, successfully beating the game within the first hour. This would require going from one end of the gauntlet to the other without being hit, and as the game’s title alludes to, a nearly impossible task.
Instead, Yooka asks you to collect members of a “Beetallion”, a group of bees that each allow for one extra hit in the Impossible Lair. In order to collect these bees, you must reach the end of each individual level. Again, each level isn’t too hard on its own, but there are 48 levels and at least a quarter of them aren’t easy to locate. I wound up with about 35 members of the Beetallion before taking my second shot at the Impossible Lair, and close to 45 by the time I finally beat it. Each extra hit is a little extra breathing room that won’t go to waste, and it’s a good idea to collect as many as you can before confronting the Impossible Lair once and for all.
One of the most challenging aspects of the Impossible Lair is that you are not allowed to bring your tonics with you. This feels like a little bit of a cheap shot, especially because it’s easy to find yourself getting used to some of the abilities they can give you, like the ability to hold onto Laylee for just a little longer after you’re hit. The majority of the game doesn’t do the best job of preparing you for the end game, though many of the Impossible Lair’s tricks can be found in singular elements of previous levels. It’s just when they are all linked together in a single level without checkpoints, those same elements become a lot more devious to deal with.
Thankfully, the Beetallion does a nice job of making the main game feel meaningful. In many of my best tries at the boss, a couple of extra Beetallion members likely would have meant a successful run of the Impossible Lair. Many of the Lair’s more strenuous moments are nearly impossible to avoid getting hit during, like a tracking rocket that follows you as you slowly climb up a roped wall, or an agile spider that guards a long jump between flame blasts. Because of this, I found myself trying to save hits for when I knew I barely stood a chance. Every extra Beetallion member feels nearly essential, making the grind to find them a worthwhile endeavor.
So what is it, exactly, that makes the Impossible Lair so brutal? Beyond its length, which could range anywhere from about twenty minutes at a speedy pace or upwards of an hour for the extra cautious, it owns some of the most difficult platforming tasks since Celeste. And unlike Celeste, the Impossible Lair doesn’t have checkpoints just a minute or two apart. Even in the earlier, easier portions of the boss run, there is a sequence where you’ll find yourself jumping between spiked blocks that are only momentarily safe before flipping into death traps. And if that isn’t enough, you also have to make your way upwards, bouncing on enemies heads as you try and time the block flips. Later on, you have to climb a moving rope while spiked helicopter enemies zig-zag at a fast pace. This is just one of the many instances I found myself lucky to have a few extra hits in the bank, because without persistent practice, there was no way I was getting through it unscathed. Learning ways to maneuver in these areas is a little bit like solving a puzzle: you’re sure to jam in the wrong piece once or twice, but when you finally find the right one for the fit, it feels like perfect order has been achieved.
On top of everything, there are four different and evolving versions of Capital B that you have to deal with. I found these to be a little easier to navigate with some practice, but they are significant in length, and if I wasn’t perfect I usually got hit more than a couple of times in the latter two matchups. Most similar to Captain K. Rool in the Donkey Kong Country franchise, Capital B zooms across the playing field at varying speeds (at least, they appear that way until you learn the pattern), making it tough to nail down what he is going to do next. Capital B has a variety of tricks up his sleeve, like raining spike balls down from the ceiling as your platform shifts in different directions, and losing precious Beetallion members to him can be especially frustrating considering the immense difficulty of the platforming sections.
The Impossible Lair culminates in a Super Metroid-esque escape. With two minutes on the clock, Yooka Laylee and the Impossible Layer owns its most thrilling moment. A forward-momentum race to the finish is both cathartic, as it escapes from some of the severe difficulty from earlier in the Impossible Lair, and electrifying. Especially in the case of only having one or two hits left to give, this portion of the end game is like sprinting down the street in your underwear – there’s a vulnerability and freedom to it in equal parts. By the time you reach the Impossible Lair’s final frame, the satisfaction of taking down the year’s hardest endgame finally sets in.
The Impossible Lair is the perfect culmination to the adventure of Yooka and Laylee. In light of its difficulty, the game grants merit to the extensive lengths the two characters go through to put Capital B’s tyranny to an end. If you’re anything like me, there will be a lot of adversity on your path to success. But in that adversity is born the most satisfying moment of the year, and while the Impossible Lair doesn’t quite live up to its namesake, it does serve as a reminder that sometimes the most difficult task is also the most rewarding.
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