Yooka-Replaylee review for PC, Nintendo Switch 2, PS5, Xbox Series X

If you want to see how much the gaming world has changed over the last ten years, you just need to compare Yooka-Laylee to Yooka-Replaylee, the remade, rebuilt, reimagined, re-whatever-you-want-to-call-it version of the original game.

When Yooka-Laylee first came out nearly a decade ago, it was in a fairly fallow period for 3D platformers. The very concept of the game was a Kickstarter sensation, as people desperate for a return to the glory days of collectathon 3D platformers flocked to the idea of a new game from ex-Rare developers who had previously created Banjo Kazoooie and Donkey Kong Country.

Now, by contrast, there’s a good argument to be made that the best games of both 2024 and 2025 were 3D platformers. While I wouldn’t say that the genre has returned to the prominence of the days when Sony was pumping out Ratchet & Clank, Sly Cooper, Jak & Daxter games, we’re definitely in a period where fans of 3D platformers don’t have too many problems finding new games to their liking.

Or, to put it more simply: Yooka-Laylee got way more attention, even though it was a substantially weaker game than Yooka-Replaylee.

Admittedly, it’s been a long time since I played Yooka-Laylee, so it’s possible I don’t remember it as well as I should if I want to make that statement. But even if I knew Yooka-Laylee inside and out, I don’t think I’d be able to say with a straight face that Yooka-Replaylee isn’t a better game in every way.

The visuals, for starters, are massively improved. This is to be expected, seeing as we’re ten years on from the original and hardware is much more powerful. But you only need to look at what passes for a remaster elsewhere, and see that improved graphics aren’t necessarily a guarantee. But in the case of Yooka-Replaylee, there’s no question that the game looks more alive and more vibrant than ever before. It’s obviously not head and shoulders about the competition the way that that Donkey Kong Country felt like it was 30+ years ago, but the game’s world is shown in so much more vivid detail this time around than in the original.

Likewise, everything to do with movement is massively improved. Whether we’re talking the controls, the camera, whatever you want to add into that box, Yooka-Replaylee feels much more modern in a way that its predecessor (if that’s the right way to describe it?) didn’t. Everything feels intuitive, and more importantly, everything works.

The biggest improvement, though, is just in the general vibe of the game.. I know that’s hard to quantify, but you see it when you play it. Where Yooka-Laylee felt like it was relying on nostalgia to paper over the fact that it was fairly middling (as Tyler noted back then), Yooka-Replaylee just feels like a modern 3D platformer. Which is to say: Yooka-Replaylee is a game that you should play on its own merits, rather than because it might remind you of games from your youth.

All things considered, that’s a pretty impressive achievement. After all, as noted above, the competition today is a lot more fierce than it was a decade ago – and yet, even with that tougher playing field, Yooka-Replaylee still manages to stand out as being one of the better 3D platformers you’re likely to come across.

Playtonic Games provided us with a Yooka-Replaylee PC code for review purposes.