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[More_Badass]

That's an interesting question, considering I consider collectathons my favourite genre, Banjo among my top ten games of all times, and GTA5 to be atrocious shit that is pure torture with it's abysmal mission design and unchallenging sandbox gameplay

That all rests on gameplay, game design, and so on.

In games like GTA, Assassin's Creed, the collectathon is just a thing to do. It's the salt and pepper sprinkled onto the omelet. An afterthought (well maybe not stunt jumps), but feathers, scraps of paper. etc.? They add nothing to the game, they add nothing to the gameplay.

But classic games, Crackdown, Snake Pass, etc.? The collectables are intertwined with the core gameplay. You aren't running up to some coins and that's it. Those coins are the reward for playing well, the bread crumb trail through a designed challenge, the impetus to test your skills to reach them because reaching them means you had the skill to do so. And Crackdown built upon that by making the collectables the gateway to being more efficient, so instead of getting more tedious, it got easier and more fun as you collected more.

 

[martinstraka8282]

Finally, my style of gaming is coming back.

Arcade NBA
Arcade Baseball (Super Mega 2)
Arcade NHL (Old time Hockey)
Crash Bandicoot, Yooka Laylee, Classic Sonic, Mario true 3D Platformer
WW2 Shooters
Timesplitters Rewind
Dirt 4 (Going back to its roots)
Star Wars Battlefront 2(With a campaign!)
HD REMAKES!

This is gonna be a hell of a year for this kid born in 84. I would really like an arcade american football game too though, I just can't play Madden anymore.

A quality Quad/mx game like ATV Offroad Fury would be pretty awesome as well.

 

[deadscreensky]

No, because this is abotu the more general statements. In fact, I have some reasons to worry about Yooka, because it does not look nearly as tight as Banjo in its design. But the statements are not "Yooka has not executed the collectathon gameplay well", but instead that it is too much stuck in the past and basically complaining about the general style of games, rather than the specific game itself. My question is less about Yooka's individual strengths and weaknesses, because it is obvious that reviewers that disregard the genre in its entirety are not a good source for that (similar to Sonic reviews that are so superficial that you can even see things like IGN being mad about the boost button in Sonic Adventure - which of course does not even exist), it is about the underlying claims about the genre and its classics.

I'm not sure I can agree with your basic premise. Just looking at the Jimquisition review, he starts out with extensively covering basic control and mechanics problems of 1998-era 3D platformers, but then goes into plenty of detail about why Yooka-Laylee is a bad collectathon too: "I don't think I've seen a hub world so poorly executed before," most of the stages are "unimaginative wreckage," "the simple act of moving Yooka around the world is unpleasant," "awful minigames," and "Many of the puzzles are tricky not because they've been designed to be, but because the game is so terrible at visual communication." And that's just some of his many detailed examples of the game itself doing the genre poorly.

Sterling also mentions at one point that Mario 64 is fun and suggests people play Snake Pass instead. He might not be overly high on the collectathon genre, but none of his substantial criticisms seem especially focused on the genre.

The Videogamer and Polygon reviews are closer to what you're saying, particularly the latter, but they still go into extensive detail on why this game itself is lousy. There's lots of talk about bad puzzles and poor level design. The genre might be an easy excuse -- and the fact that nobody really makes this sort of game nowadays isn't accidental -- but these reviews are absolutely taking Yooka-Laylee to task for its own failings.

(And yeah, like some others say I think this thread is fairly premature, because all we can actually talk about right now is the genre and maybe review footage. I don't think you were trying to be tricky, but it's predisposing the conversation to the point you're making.)

I'm just gonna jump into this here. I'd argue the reason you sometimes don't understand the reactions to things you like, is because you because you similarly see other things as "right" or "wrong".

The narrowing of focus in 3D Sonic games that occurred since Unleashed is something I would actually consider something the team finally did very right, and allowed the series to play both to the strengths of the character in terms of speed, and also created a very unique brand of platformer that no other IP comes close to providing. The series suddenly stopped being a weaker, mechanically inferior Mario 64, and became a game with its own identity... the best at what it does effectively.

Meanwhile the "Werehog" part that you consider to be "absolutely right" is probably the single aspect within the series to be near universally seen as a negative element by everyone else. It's basically the worst aspects of the Adventure games' side characters, just dressed up as another part of Sonic to disguise it. It was Knack before Knack existed. A rubbish beat-em-up masquerading as a platformer.

So, if we consider that you can look at the "auto-pilot" parts of modern Sonic and deem that something that's "plain wrong", how is it that you can't look at the fact a game is designed almost entirely around being a collectathon, a term used with very little affection these days to describe the ways many games will fill out their worlds with useless fluff, in order to give the impression that the game has significantly more content than it has, by giving the player busywork to do... and realise that's a very large reason many people wouldn't like it. The very concept is something many people would consider "plain wrong" in the many games it still manifests itself in.

This is a great post. (And I'm one of those weirdos who felt the Werehog stuff was mostly fine, just badly paced.) Wandering around nearly aimlessly in mostly empty worlds was only in vogue for a very short period of time.

 

[Yoshi]

Nah, it's not the only reason... but it'd probably surprise you how large a group it would account for. Like example, I fucking love arcade racers to this day (Daytona USA is imo the best racer ever, and would sit in my overall top 5 games of all time), however there's was a very clear pre and post Gran Turismo for the genre. At someone that would have otherwise worshipped Sega Rally for providing them with the most believable racing experience, would from now on likely deride any racer even remotely like it.

For some of us, the core concepts of the subgenre was what we wanted, and still want... for others, it was just a convenient overlap until technology finally realised what they really wanted all along.

I feel you there (unsurprisingly, as a Sonic fan, as well). Actually, what plays into making this thread is the general conception that basically everything that I like in video games is not only something that others don't like (that's fine!), but that it is a thing of the past that has no merit today and may only be liked due to strong nostalgia..

- 2d platforming (boo, 2d platformers may never cost more than 10€ download-only!)
- linear, fast paced platforming (on auto-control!)
- collectathon platforming (soo 90s)
- puzzle-oriented action-adventure (superseded by open world)
- arcade-style games, in particular arade racers (hell, Miyamoto himself says, why make an F-Zero today and everyone who makes a racer not Mario Kart that is not a sim, just makes it an open world sim-with-helpers, because linear tracks are a thing of the past)

 

[Gestault]

offtopic but I dont see the point in comparing this to N&B since you couldnt compare N&B to the N64 Banjos

I think the comparison to N&B, considering it makes an explicit rationale in the game's beginning why they decided to expand the game design, in a thread asking if the core game design of the earlier Banjo-Kazooie titles has aged out in terms of general interest (as indicated by the critical response to Yooka-Laylee) is a clear point to make. The relatively high ratings of the original N64 Banjo games isn't at odds with any of that.

Please consider the fact that Xbox One Yooka has six more reviews and sits at 72%.

Right, which is why I also mentioned the PC version, because it was rated even higher than the Xbox One version.

 

[Yoshi]

(And yeah, like some others say I think this thread is fairly premature, because all we can actually talk about right now is the genre and maybe review footage. I don't think you were trying to be tricky, but it's predisposing the conversation to the point you're making.)

Well, the thing is, I don't want to talk the quality of Yooka-Laylee itself and I agree there are some points in Sterlings review that might point to specific failures of Yooka, though I cannot be entirely sure about this considering the roundabout way of dimissing its whole genre later on. But that's besides the point, my issue is independent of if Yooka is the greatest turd on earth. For all I know it may be, but the specific claims I have highlighted go way beyond Yooka-Laylee and target games we do have a good knowledge about, i.e. the 90s and early 2000s 3D platformers. We know them, so if there are any major advances a new platformer in that vein would have to take into consideration, we would have to be able to make them out in those games already.

 

[John Kowalski]

Why is what is to come inherently more valuable or worthy than what we left behind? Half of my favorite movies are from the 1930s, a half-century before I was born, and I would vigorously argue with anyone who said that cinema today is better than cinema then. Different, absolutely.

I fail to see how gaming today is an improvement over gaming 10 or 20 or 30 years ago. Different, yes, but better? No.

Progression is just a strong cultural impetus. It's not about quality or what's better, it's about being contemporary and in constant movement towards what's ahead.

 

[Gestault]

Progression is just a strong cultural impetus. It's not about quality or what's better, it's about being contemporary and in constant movement towards what's ahead.

In the context of entertainment like this, it's a matter of what serves the interest of the most people, not what a sub-group insists should be liked. Mind you, it's not like videogames are forced on that broader player base. It's just what about gets consistently funded.

 

[tebiro boy]

When people complain about the lack of voice acting (as some people have in this thread), to me this just shows exactly what is wrong with games these days, and why the vast majority of them don't remotely appeal to me.

Whatever happened to having an imagination? Why do people still read novels, when there is an apparently 'far superior' medium called movies? Because novels provide a very different experience, a different way of telling a story that is not the same as movies.

Likewise, there should be room in the games industry for different, and yes if you want to call it that, old-fashioned methods of expression. I would have zero interest in Yooka-Laylee if it merely replicated all of the stuff we see in virtually every other game these days.

I get that not everyone is into this kind of thing. Not everyone likes to read books, either. But not every game has to follow convention just for the sake of it. There should be room in the industry for diversity, and reviewers should recognise and respect that.

 

[Synth]

I feel you there (unsurprisingly, as a Sonic fan, as well). Actually, what plays into making this thread is the general conception that basically everything that I like in video games is not only something that others don't like (that's fine!), but that it is a thing of the past that has no merit today and may only be liked due to strong nostalgia..

- 2d platforming (boo, 2d platformers may never cost more than 10€ download-only!)
- linear, fast paced platforming (on auto-control!)
- collectathon platforming (soo 90s)
- puzzle-oriented action-adventure (superseded by open world)
- arcade-style games, in particular arade racers (hell, Miyamoto himself says, why make an F-Zero today and everyone who makes a racer not Mario Kart that is not a sim, just makes it an open world sim-with-helpers, because linear tracks are a thing of the past)

Yea, I totally get how you feel in that regards... I mean, check this post regarding my favourite games...

Some or my favourites are:
Wipeout
Virtua Fighter
Megaman X
Daytona USA
Quake III Arena

Add Shenmue to that, and as you can imagine, the industry hasn't been very kind to me over the years, lol.

 

[Schopenhauerian]

...I feel that the 3D collectaton is still satisfactory and perfectly valid, when done properly. I've been lately reading in this forum how outdated and disappointing is playing the first Banjo-Kazooie nowadays, but I actually replay it pretty often and I find myself enjoying its variety, adventurous spirit and incredible pace just like twenty years ago... again, when the pace is right and things are done properly; I don't replay DK64 and Tooie that often because of that...

I disagree, you may not like Banjo-Kazooie (anymore?), but this is not a matter of nostalgia. Banjo offers a very dense, concentrated gameplay experience... my bias towards liking this genre more than others plays a significant role here, but Banjo is not just fondly remembered, it is actually masterfully crafted...

The collectibles act as a structural component in the world design, they are not comparable to "Assassin's Creed flags", which are just distributed over the world without much thought put into it. Collecting itself is part of many games nowadays, but this is only the same thing from a narrative standpoint. If you analyse the purpose of collectibles... notes to outline the main paths in a level, jiggys to signify completion of a main challenge... it is [not quite] comparable to what [most] open world games do...

Banjo-Kazooie's design is [such] that you do not wander aimlessly. Just play a Banjo level and see how much time it takes for you to find a jiggy, even if you have already found half the jiggys in the world. The density and the note-bases structuring makes sure that you don't just go somehwere... hoping to stumble on something, but that you are actually lead to all important points of interest by the designers hand without putting any force on you (like in a super linear game).

...YL simply appears to be a mediocre game in general. Yet it wears "90s" on its sleeve so blatantly, the easiest conclusion people come to is that old games are now bad. Though in reality, many classics are still great and YL being mediocre actually changes nothing about that. It doesn't help that this subgenre is underrepresented nowadays. I.e. if Mighty Number 9 came out before the 2D revival within the indie sector, I bet reviewers would have claimed that 2D platformers are simply outdated, not blaming the actual poor quality of MN9.

This is how I feel about it as well. It's just a mediocre game that pales in comparison to the older games from which it draws most of its inspiration. It feels empty and overly easy with boring, dead-simple platforming in a way that even the older N64 platformers don't when you go back and play them today. If anything, it was precisely this failure to capture the tighter design and joyful creativity of its classic forebears that gives reviewers a negative impression of the game [and genre] as a whole. I think they are conflating the game's intentions with its failings. It had good intentions; it just didn't realize them fully.

...The thing is, though, that the quality of the game is another issue. A collectathon can be good (like Jak), it can be amazing (like Banjo) or it can be weak (like DK64)...

3D platformers with a collectathan focus are a VERY tricky genre. The level design really REALLY good or else the game feels very stale. I have a feeling that the reviewers don't have as much of a problem with the genre [as a whole] as they think they do. And the issue is more that YL has poor/boring level design. Although movement/controls in the game looks good, the levels never had any good footage in them. And the enemies looked so poorly placed/bland... In other words, Yooka-Laylee is not likely anachronistic. It's probably just average or boring.

Actually, Jak & Daxter was quite clever in its presentation in this regard, but the worlds were still separated. They glued three worlds together each and put a tunnel between those triples instead of a hub. It would have felt like a proper evolution, had Banjo-Tooie not come before and offered a way more complex interactivity between the worlds. Still, both games [Jak & Daxter and Banjo-Tooie] are significantly weaker than Kazooie, but talking about world cohesion, Tooie has trumped Daxter before it could trump Kazooie...

Well, the thing is, I don't want to talk the quality of Yooka-Laylee itself and I agree there are some points in Sterlings review that might point to specific failures of Yooka, though I cannot be entirely sure about this considering the roundabout way of dimissing its whole genre later on. But that's besides the point, my issue is independent of if Yooka is the greatest turd on earth. For all I know it may be, but the specific claims I have highlighted go way beyond Yooka-Laylee and target games we do have a good knowledge about, i.e. the 90s and early 2000s 3D platformers...

Interesting thread! The sentiments above reflect my own, personal taste/impressions.

However, at this point, it's merely a suspicion on my part (based purely on impressions derived from gameplay videos) that Yooka doesn't quite measure up to Banjo: I could very well end up changing my mind once I play it. And since I was a backer of Yooka from the start, look forward to trying it out for myself.

I would still be glad that I backed Playtonic's (clearly quite earnest) efforts, even if it turns out my suspicions are correct and Yooka doesn't quite measure up to Banjo, since I personally disagree fundamentally with the notion that these types of games are outdated. However, with respect to the following question:

What in culture/media/gaming changed to make people go from loving "collectathon," platformers to not caring about them between now and the late 90s, specifically?

I do think that the folks below have described some of the additional reasons why the genre as a whole has fallen out of favor among a large subset of gamers/reviewers:

Larger game worlds no longer being impressive, and becoming the norm. Back in the N64 days, stuff like Mario 64 and Banjo Kazooie were novel in that they provided game worlds that consoles like say the Saturn flat out struggled to approximate at all...

...Back on the N64, when this kind of technology was cutting edge and you could move in every direction in a fully 3D environment for the first time, the simple act of movement was extremely fun. Turning your camera to bring something new into view, or climbing something and seeing what was below at a different perspective, was the height of adventure in my youth. This was predicated by the fact that I was exploring a space in a way I had never explored before. This is a feeling that no longer exists.

3D platformers like this perfectly demonstrated what was possible with this new graphical technology and was possibly the most fun and accessible way to experience it. But once we have surpassed that novelty, it's a lot harder to get back in that frame of mind.

When I think about my time with Super Mario 64, I really don't remember many stars. I didn't get excited to get out there and collect anything. I got excited to see the new map. My memories of SM64 are about locations more than mechanics. I don't know if I can feel that way again... I think 3D platformers are great technical showcases. They were the best way to show off what the N64 could do. I think they might be too rooted in a frame of mind I don't have anymore.

As others have said, the style of game hasn't really been updated, as much as games that went in another direction... Like Uncharted isn't a 3D platformer like a Banjo or Yooka, but as a third person game with jumping it is a modern example to compare to...

Nah, it's not the only reason... but it'd probably surprise you how large a group it would account for. Like example, I fucking love arcade racers to this day (Daytona USA is imo the best racer ever, and would sit in my overall top 5 games of all time), however there's was a very clear pre and post Gran Turismo for the genre. At someone that would have otherwise worshipped Sega Rally for providing them with the most believable racing experience, would from now on likely deride any racer even remotely like it. For some of us, the core concepts of the subgenre was what we wanted, and still want... for others, it was just a convenient overlap until technology finally realised what they really wanted all along.

...Yooka-laylee isn't for everyone. It's a N64 platformer in an era of Skyrims, GTAs, Uncharteds, Halos, and Dark Souls...

...Microsoft's consoles have a totally different audience from those seen on Nintendo's consoles... Just look at our old friend Sonic The Hedgehog. IIRC, apparently the highest selling version of Sonic Generations was the 3DS version, and the highest selling version of Sonic All Star Racing Transformed at launch was actually the Wii U version...

...I think there is still an audience for games like Banjo-Kazooie... it's just not on Xbox. Banjo and Kazooie are basically Nintendo characters that found themselves wounded up on a console that doesn't and never really had the same audience. I don't think people lost interest in Banjo-Kazooie, rather, I think BK ended up being taken away from the audience that had interest those type of franchises. In the end, I feel like had Rare managed to stuck around with Nintendo, their mascot platformer games could have continued to thrive.

And yet N&B flopped hard. It did okay with critics but not a lot of die-hard Banjo players. I actually think those Banjo fans would get more pleasure and enjoyment for Y-L than what N&B gave us. Critics alone don't always get the market right (still amused at some Pokemon reviews in the 90s going "eh, good but nothing special".)

 

[Skux]

As genre trends come and go, they become associated with that era.

Look at music. Anyone who starts a hair metal band today will immediately be considered a throwback to the 80s.

Same with YL. It leans heavily on the N64 platformer era without offering elements from other genres to distinguish it from games of that time.

That's not a bad thing, just a different thing. We had the 3D platformer era. Then the dudebro Halo/Gears/CoD era and the cinematic action QTE era. Now I'd say we're in an 'open world story driven action adventure with RPG elements' era.

 

[orborborb]

cameras have not improved at all in 3rd person games since the 90s, level designs have simply become terribly dull and wide and flat and less likely to get in front of a camera

 

[Wozman23]

Progression is just a strong cultural impetus. It's not about quality or what's better, it's about being contemporary and in constant movement towards what's ahead.

But the very nature of that progression comes from gaining knowledge. Primitive Stone Age tools were great inventions for their time. Fire was a great invention for its time. The wheel probably made people shit their loincloths. But they really pale in comparison to alternating current, the smart phone, or the space shuttle.

I've always believed that as a whole, gaming is only getting better, just as is the advancement of society. Super Mario Bros. was a great platformer. But Miyamoto took the knowledge he gained from making it and made countless other better platformers. Sure, as with any bell curve, you're going to have bad games, average games, and great games, but overall, the ceiling is still being raised.

That's kind of the point of life: to be better than yesterday. That doesn't mean you're immune to failure though.

 

[Tarextherex]

It's a false equivalence by reviewers, because the game's marketing focused so much on nostalgia. YL simply appears to be a mediocre game in general. Yet it wears "90s" on its sleeve so blatanty, the easiest conclusion people come to is that old games are now bad. Though in reality, many classics are still great and YL being mediocre actually changes nothing about that.

It doesn't help that this subgenre is underrepresented nowadays. I.e. if Mighty Number 9 came out before the 2D revival within the indie sector, I bet reviewers would have claimed that 2D platformers are simply outdated, not blaming the actual poor quality of MN9.

This tbh

I think the main point of those reviews is that the time collect-a-thon platformers is over

So, it's not that the games have been done better since hten. It's that people don't like the types of games they are to begin with, so doing them better is still not particularly appealing to those people. I posted about this in the YL review thread, but I feel that those collect-a-thon platformers are the reason that 3D platformers died out so quickly after the 32bit era. When you look at 3D platformers now, it's a pretty bare landscape. And what 3D platformer is still standing? Mario. The one that's main mechanics are still centered around platforming rather than running around looking for something shining.

The reviewers were completely out of touch with that game, most of the complaints against it were "1200 Microsoft points", rest was basically people not liking platformer/adventure games. It's the same than "insert game that was badly reviewed because the reviewer didn't like the genre". If it was a Wii Virtual Console game it would have recieved the same scores, just like every true classic did

Also bad open world games not treating collectables well doesn't mean that collecting things is inherently bad in game design. Sure, it's merely "looking for something shining" in bad/mediocre games but in Banjo it's the reward for clearing a part of the level, whether is through platforming, puzzle, mini-game or character/world interaction. There's an elaborate scenario linked to each Jiggy, too bad that people forget about that by thinking that collecting things in games is always as tedious as getting all the flags in Assassin's Creed 1 or something. YL seems mediocre mostly because it doesn't look like there's much compelling tasks to do in that game, collectables seem very arbitrarly placed, the locks behind them are very simple. I don't see the elaborate level design that both Banjo games had in YL videos. Banjo levels always had very distinct points of interest through them, they also had mechanics that would change the state of the world. There is a very strong sense of purpose behind everything in Banjo, something that could not be said about many open world games. YL levels don't look that they have much of that, they seem to fit the theme but that's it

 

[ramparter]

Why is level-based 3D platformer a genre out of time and not turn-based games, hex-grid wargames, 4Xs, interactive fiction, adventure games, RTS games, and so on?

Havent played this game, but the sentiment I get from these quotes is "this game does some things poorly, so that means the style of game is poor/obsolete/etc." Which seems like a pretty narrow way to look at things

Thank you. I'm so tired of this way of thinking. This isn't only now. I remember reading a Banjo Tooie review back in the day (probably uk N64 magazine) that said the Banjo formula has started to show fatigue. I found it very weird. A few years later I finally played Tooie and it was clear to me that the game had some poor design choices and the experience wasnt that tight like original Banjo. It was the game's fault not the genre's.

 

[Yoshi]

As genre trends come and go, they become associated with that era.

Look at music. Anyone who starts a hair metal band today will immediately be considered a throwback to the 80s.

Same with YL. It leans heavily on the N64 platformer era without offering elements from other genres to distinguish it from games of that time.

That's not a bad thing, just a different thing. We had the 3D platformer era. Then the dudebro Halo/Gears/CoD era and the cinematic action QTE era. Now I'd say we're in an 'open world story driven action adventure with RPG elements' era.

However, in gaming, "old" go-to genres are not necessarily dismissed, you can very well make a Halo / Gears / CoD now or an Uncharted now and get almost no "this is so outdated" in return. For some reason, with genres that were popular a bit earlier, particularly arcady games and collectathons, this is an issue for quite a while already. Hell, it even hits Crash Bandicoot, how often Crash threads are trashed up with "Crash was never good, you just need to realise this"...

 

[Mihael Mello Keehl]

I think the comparison to N&B, considering it makes an explicit rationale in the game's beginning why they decided to expand the game design, in a thread asking if the core game design of the earlier Banjo-Kazooie titles has aged out in terms of general interest (as indicated by the critical response to Yooka-Laylee) is a clear point to make. The relatively high ratings of the original N64 Banjo games isn't at odds with any of that.



Right, which is why I also mentioned the PC version, because it was rated even higher than the Xbox One version.

Well in that case, N&B is a prime example of changing something just beacuse its time to change something dont make it good thing. I went back to N&B after it went BC on Xbox One and Im reading the dialogue like, ok....??? yall still screwed it up tho.

 

[Ansatz]

Why is level-based 3D platformer a genre out of time and not turn-based games, hex-grid wargames, 4Xs, interactive fiction, adventure games, RTS games, and so on?

Havent played this game, but the sentiment I get from these quotes is "this game does some things poorly, so that means the style of game is poor/obsolete/etc." Which seems like a pretty narrow way to look at things

Precisely this.

Look at how metroidvanias released today are received, a genre established with Super Metroid and Symphony of the Night - both released before Banjo-Kazooie. Axiom Verge has 55 positive, 6 mixed and 0 negative reviews.

 

[.J.]

I'm not sure if this has been said, but I think maybe we're not always talking about the right thing when having this discussion.

It seems to me that what people wanted from a project like Y-L was to replicate the feeling they got playing the old Banjo Kazooie or Mario 64 games. What I don't think anyone wanted was to also experience all of the negative qualities those games had due to technical limitations or whatever.

It's a really fine line, but when you're talking about nostalgia, it's important to remember that people aren't chasing a product within its specific parameters, but are rather chasing the feeling that product gave them. Sometimes that's done really poorly, as seems to be the case with Y-L to many people, where the developers focused more on replicating those games rather than what those games made people feel. Sometimes it works out really well.

I'm not a developer or a designer, but I recognize how hard that "feeling" probably is to quantify and replicate. With that said, a game is either enjoyable or it isn't. We didn't know anything different 20 years ago, so bad controls, weird physics, and shoddy camerawork were acceptable. These days, not so much. I'm sure it's possible to create a 3D platform that feels true to its heritage while also making enough tweaks to give it that elusive "Nintendo feeling".

 

[2Smashed4U]

The main thing I see as an issue with collectathons is that to me, making many of the objectives of a game "collect all the things" was due to the limitation of N64 hardware. Banjo Tooie was better than BK1 for me because, if I'm not mistaken, they used the expansion pak to build bigger, connected worlds with more objectives. I haven't played Y-L yet but it sounds there are only a few worlds and not much variance in things to do. To me that would be a regression even for an N64 game.

If they had made an N64 style platformer that expanded on what B-T did - like have a big explorable hub world, having a good number of large well designed levels with more varying objectives - that would have been the ideal game.

I'll probably still pick this up but I don't really expect much from it.

 

[Skux]

However, in gaming, "old" go-to genres are not necessarily dismissed, you can very well make a Halo / Gears / CoD now or an Uncharted now and get almost no "this is so outdated" in return. For some reason, with genres that were popular a bit earlier, particularly arcady games and collectathons, this is an issue for quite a while already. Hell, it even hits Crash Bandicoot, how often Crash threads are trashed up with "Crash was never good, you just need to realise this"...

First and third person shooters are more recent and don't seem so out of place, especially when so many games have similar controls.

But still, if you make a straight 'chest high walls cover shooter with vehicle sections' game today and don't offer anything new, you'd be lumped in with Gears 1 and its hundred other clones of the time. This is basically what happened with Gears 4, it felt dated on release, sticking to the tropes of the genre too heavily.

 

[Gestault]

I think until the game is in more people's hands, this is a hard topic to dive into, because the balance of [Yooka-Laylee's actual game quality] vs [the broader collection-based platforming genre] is vague in the audiences' mind. That said, if game quality stemming from structure (rather than particular execution) come up frequently in written reviews, it makes sense to consider that at face value. That means a lot of different people got that sense.

Well in that case, N&B is a prime example of changing something just beacuse its time to change something dont make it good thing. I went back to N&B after it went BC on Xbox One and Im reading the dialogue like, ok....??? yall still screwed it up tho.

I'm not saying any one person has to like the result, but I cited the numbers I did because theoretically, N&B managed something right if the meta-average ended up in the 80s. Comparing the PC reviews, the gap isn't even that dramatic, but if Yooka-Laylee's issues stem from offering something a broader audience doesn't want structurally, then that's precicely an answer to what the OP asks. Even if I walk away from Yooka-Laylee absolutely adoring it, I know that may just be my appreciation for something I grew up on, which is why seeing the cross-section of reviews is interesting in a case where I was going to be buying the game anyway.

 

[Ansatz]

The main thing I see as an issue with collectathons is that to me, making many of the objectives of a game "collect all the things" was due to the limitation of N64 hardware. Banjo Tooie was better than BK1 for me because, if I'm not mistaken, they used the expansion pak to build bigger, connected worlds with more objectives. I haven't played Y-L yet but it sounds there are only a few worlds and not much variance in things to do. To me that would be a regression even for an N64 game.

If they had made an N64 style platformer that expanded on what B-T did - like have a big explorable hub world, having a good number of large well designed levels with more varying objectives - that would have been the ideal game.

I'll probably still pick this up but I don't really expect much from it.

I don't understand how making the levels bigger would lead to a better game, that's when you get less variety and more copy/paste elements. All they did in Banjo-Tooie was to extend the distance between two points of interest, aka made it worse.

 

[bon]

This sometimes happens when reviewers have to review a game from a niche genre that they don't really like. Did you know turn-based battles are archaic and adventure games are a dead genre? Did you know 2D graphics and gameplay are outdated? At least that's what reviews were saying years ago.

 

[Mandoric]

What in culture/media/gaming changed to make people go from loving "collectathon," platformers to not caring about them between now and the late 90s, specifically?

I don't believe that specific game mechanics can become obsolete, but the thing with the distinguishing collectathon factor of collectathons is that it's not a game mechanic, it's a content dripfeed method. And those CAN become obsolete in addition to unfashionable.

Now, it's possible there's a market that still likes that method. But it's also possible that the market is nostalgia-driven and doesn't actually like it now that they've been off the N64 farm, or in my opinion most likely that most have fond memories of playing games like Mario 64 because the individual challenges were appealing but have forgotten games like Bubsy 3D where they were dire, and are mistaking a love of well-tuned 3d platforming for a love of the metastructure it happened to be coincidentally tied to.

 

[Yoshi]

I'm not sure if this has been said, but I think maybe we're not always talking about the right thing when having this discussion.

It seems to me that what people wanted from a project like Y-L was to replicate the feeling they got playing the old Banjo Kazooie or Mario 64 games. What I don't think anyone wanted was to also experience all of the negative qualities those games had due to technical limitations or whatever.

It's a really fine line, but when you're talking about nostalgia, it's important to remember that people aren't chasing a product within its specific parameters, but are rather chasing the feeling that product gave them. Sometimes that's done really poorly, as seems to be the case with Y-L to many people, where the developers focused more on replicating those games rather than what those games made people feel. Sometimes it works out really well.

I'm not a developer or a designer, but I recognize how hard that "feeling" probably is to quantify and replicate. With that said, a game is either enjoyable or it isn't. We didn't know anything different 20 years ago, so bad controls, weird physics, and shoddy camerawork were acceptable. These days, not so much. I'm sure it's possible to create a 3D platform that feels true to its heritage while also making enough tweaks to give it that elusive "Nintendo feeling".

That's something that's often brought up, but it is a goal that is almost unreachable, because how people feel is dependent on many outside factors as well. I don't think the exact feeling needs reproduction, the gameplay qualities need (and of course should be expanded upon if they can come up with good ideas; for a a first game in the genre after more than ten years, revitalising is sufficient though from my perspective). Imagine someone would set out to reproduce the feelings young players had upon first playing Super Mario 64. There is basically no way to do this.

I don't understand how making the levels bigger would lead to a better game, that's when you get less variety and more copy/paste elements. All they did in Banjo-Tooie was to extend the distance between two points of interest, aka made it worse.

While I agree on the general assessment of Banjo-Tooie vs. Kazooie, it did change more than just the size of the worlds. Tooie is a supremely complex game when it comes to level design. All the intertwined levels and challenges spanning several levels were making it a super tough to play game.

 

[Alchemy]

Its probably the same assholes that thing turn based combat systems are old and just not a preference thing. AKA assholes that don't understand opinions.

 

[privitsan02]

Maybe it's because games revolving around collectibles isn't interesting in 2017. One may even say that the main reason Mario or Ratchet & Clank are still around is because of how the games aren't revolving around that focal point.

I'm glad as well. Sure, I loved Spyro and Banjo in the 90s but at least Nintendo and Insomniac knew it was about the gameplay at the end of the day. If you are still into that game design, I doubt Yooka Laylee will bore you or upset you.

Regardless, there's lots of other things about YL that doesn't stand up to Banjo anyway.

Best wishes.

 

[IronicSonic]

So many good opinions in this thread.

Arcade and platforms for life <3

 

[Synth]

However, in gaming, "old" go-to genres are not necessarily dismissed, you can very well make a Halo / Gears / CoD now or an Uncharted now and get almost no "this is so outdated" in return. For some reason, with genres that were popular a bit earlier, particularly arcady games and collectathons, this is an issue for quite a while already. Hell, it even hits Crash Bandicoot, how often Crash threads are trashed up with "Crash was never good, you just need to realise this"...

For the bolded... I actually think this is only really the case because these franchises are actually still making notable progress with each iteration (even if there's some dispute in regards to the directions they take). Halo 5 is honestly further divorced from Halo CE than I'd argue 3D Mario is today compared to Mario 64. Call of Duty is currently set in space, and has inherited Titanfall-esque movement systems. Uncharted 4 takes a lot of cues from The Last of Us and the reboot of Tomb Raider. Etc. Gears of War 4 is the game that's most directly comparable with its entries of past years... and funnily enough it does routinely face criticism for being "outdated", with many people pointing at the new God of War and saying "see, that's how you avoid stagnation".

Even with the relative newness of both Halo and Uncharted in comparison to Banjo, you can already see the sliding scale for how the older entries are viewed today. The original Halo is one of the highest rated games ever, with a metacritic of 97. The lowest scoring entry into the series prior to this generation was Halo 4 at 87. Now, the MCC comes along combining four entries into a single package (individually rated at 97,95, 94 and 87), and is rated... 85? Check this quote:

I don't think you need me to reiterate how historic these individual campaigns are in Xbox and Halo history, so I don't feel the need to rate them all individually. You have likely played these games before and know what you are getting from the experience, and you know that you are getting a ton of content in this package. However, the quality of that content has left me seriously disappointed. I don't feel that the first two chapters of the saga really hold up that well after all these years, even with Halo 2 getting the full remake treatment for the game's 10th anniversary. I was disappointed with Halo C.E. when it was released for the 360 for the same reasons. This really saddened me because I absolutely loved them both when they were originally released but that was quite a while ago and they just don't feel as good today.

So, you can see it wasn't just rereleases (or spiritual sequels) of Banjo-Kazooie that were subject to this. Even gaming's other golden child Uncharted saw the same thing with it's own collection (88 + 96 + 92 =.... 86?), with similar sentiments popping up in some reviews:

A sumptuous remaster, but the games themselves have aged badly.

Can you imagine how each of these may have reviewed if the product hadn't contained four individual games... or worse still, if another decade had passed, and then another game came along to ape a single entry, but made none of the sorts of improvements/changes that the series are currently implementing on top of themselves currently?

 

[More_Badass]

Maybe it's because games revolving around collectibles isn't interesting in 2017. One may even say that the main reason Mario or Ratchet & Clank are still around is because of how the games aren't revolving around that focal point.

I'm glad as well. Sure, I loved Spyro and Banjo in the 90s but at least Nintendo and Insomniac knew it was about the gameplay at the end of the day. If you are still into that game design, I doubt Yooka Laylee will bore you or upset you.

Regardless, there's lots of other things about YL that doesn't stand up to Banjo anyway.

Best wishes.

Tell that to Grim Dawn and Diablo or countless RPGs. A game with loot is a game about collectibles.

Revolving around collectibles doesn't make a game bad or boring or obsolete. It's when the game itself is boring or bad or poorly designed that the focus on collectibles makes the overall game tedious and frustrating.

 

[2Smashed4U]

I don't understand how making the levels bigger would lead to a better game, that's when you get less variety and more copy/paste elements. All they did in Banjo-Tooie was to extend the distance between two points of interest, aka made it worse.

I don't agree with that at all. They made the levels much bigger than B-K and then put more actual things to do in them. That game was far more intricately designed than B-K and it was much better too.

 

[WillyFive]

I don't agree with that at all. They made the levels much bigger than B-K and then put more actual things to do in them. That game was far more intricately designed than B-K and it was much better too.

Yeah, making bigger levels don't always mean more empty space.

 

[Yoshi]

I don't believe that specific game mechanics can become obsolete, but the thing with the distinguishing collectathon factor of collectathons is that it's not a game mechanic, it's a content dripfeed method. And those CAN become obsolete in addition to unfashionable.

Now, it's possible there's a market that still likes that method. But it's also possible that the market is nostalgia-driven and doesn't actually like it now that they've been off the N64 farm, or in my opinion most likely that most have fond memories of playing games like Mario 64 because the individual challenges were appealing but have forgotten games like Bubsy 3D where they were dire, and are mistaking a love of well-tuned 3d platforming for a love of the metastructure it happened to be coincidentally tied to.

It is a mechanic for game world structuring and since the game world is deeply intertwined with the gameplay, I'd say it should count as a gameplay mechanic. You can make good or bad games with it, but Banjo-Kazooie or Super Mario 64 would definitely be lesser games without the collectibles that structure the game world. Especially Banjo.

 

[Gestault]

Tell that to Grim Dawn and Diablo or countless RPGs. A game with loot is a game about collectibles.

Revolving around collectibles doesn't make a game bad or boring or obsolete. It's when the game itself is boring or bad or poorly designed that the focus on collectibles makes the overall game tedious and frustrating.

I completely agree here. I see some people bring up "collect-a-thon" dismissively, and they don't stop to think how derivations on that premise are constantly applied in modern game design.

 

[Spieler Eins]

I feel like many people don't realize this game was funded by fans of the genre. They asked for a BK spiritual successor and gave their money for a game exactly like this. The game was created for the backers first and foremost.

Fans wanted BK but got DK64.

 

[PSqueak]

hear that critics, it's not for you

well, you know, when the game was literally funded by the fans who literally wanted a platform game circa 1998, it's kinda fair to say this.

 

[Jawbreaker]

Its probably the same assholes that thing turn based combat systems are old and just not a preference thing. AKA assholes that don't understand opinions.

But some of those same "assholes" gave Persona 5 a high score.

 

[freethoughtbubble]

It's interesting to imagine what an "evolution" of the Banjo formula would look like. I think you would have to greatly expand the available moveset, introduce a more pronounced physics component to the gameplay (did wonders for Zelda), tighten up the level design to exploit the new possibilities, and streamline the collecting piece (less of them, more cleverly hidden/distributed). Oh, and it would have to be strikingly beautiful because, let's face it, a big part of the appeal of these games was navigating huge awe-inspiring locales.

Include a competent and light-hearted narrative while we're at it. Capital B is no Grunty, seems like.

well, you know, when the game was literally funded by the fans who literally wanted a platform game circa 1998, it's kinda fair to say this.

It's really not. First, it's a critic's job to decide whether they think a game is good, not whether it fits the parameters of its most devout fans. Second, the backers aren't a monolith -- I'm sure there are many who, like Jim Sterling, were hoping for an update to the formula, not a straight retread of decades' only games. The negative reviews would be invaluable to someone like that.

 

[FinalAres]

This is what happens when people think changing tastes in gaming means improved tastes in gaming.

 

[Ansatz]

For the bolded... I actually think this is only really the case because these franchises are actually still making notable progress with each iteration (even if there's some dispute in regards to the directions they take). Halo 5 is honestly further divorced from Halo CE than I'd argue 3D Mario is today compared to Mario 64. Call of Duty is currently set in space, and has inherited Titanfall-esque movement systems. Uncharted 4 takes a lot of cues from The Last of Us and the reboot of Tomb Raider. Etc. Gears of War 4 is the game that's most directly comparable with its entries of past years... and funnily enough it does routinely face criticism for being "outdated", with many people pointing at the new God of War and saying "see, that's how you avoid stagnation".

Even with the relative newness of both Halo and Uncharted in comparison to Banjo, you can already see the sliding scale for how the older entries are viewed today. The original Halo is one of the highest rated games ever, with a metacritic of 97. The lowest scoring entry into the series prior to this generation was Halo 4 at 87. Now, the MCC comes along combining four entries into a single package (individually rated at 97,95, 94 and 87), and is rated... 85? Check this quote:


So, you can see it wasn't just rereleases (or spiritual sequels) of Banjo-Kazooie that were subject to this. Even gaming's other golden child Uncharted saw the same thing with it's own collection (88 + 96 + 92 =.... 86?), with similar sentiments popping up in some reviews:


Can you imagine how each of these may have reviewed if the product hadn't contained for individual games... or worse still, if another decade had passed, and then another game came along to ape a single entry, but made none of the sorts of improvements/changes that the series are currently implementing on top of themselves currently?

Yeah, the reason for this has to do with changes in taste. Change in what people want to get out of a game. Modern quality of life improvements that result in streamlined design are considered essential, and of course the heavy reliance on narrative - if the enjoyment doesn't stem from stimulating gameplay, then it has to come from somewhere else. People openly say that you do the mechanically repetitive sidequests in Witcher 3 for the story reward attached to them, and they love it.

Personally Halo CE is the only game I'd revisit in the franchise, perhaps the sequel as well which I have on PC but never got into because the mouse/KB controls are abit off. You can clearly see the influence of The Last of Us in God of War 4 as well, a shift in tone and level design direction. I was never into God of War titles, mainly because of the scripted action sequences as opposed to organic gameplay systems as in Platinum titles, but I vastly prefer the previous setup they had.

 

[calavera_jo]

I think some reviewers simply don't examine games by their mechanics. Some will give more attention to superfluous stuff like graphics, narrative, progression systems & customization over anything else.

 

[jimboton]

Most games from that era never played well. My first console was the NES, had an 2600, SNES, etc... I was also there for the PS1/SS/N64, and even for their time a lot of those games had glaring flaws, and looked very ugly.

Out of all the generations of video games that era holds up the worst.

You had a bad combination of developers trying to understand what did and didn't work in a 3D space, and hardware that was woefully underpowered to produce good looking 3d games at a smooth frame rate.

Mario 64
Soul Reaver
Majora's Mask
Shadow Man
Banjo Kazooie
Outcast

Some of the best 3d games ever made right there.

Better graphics, higher framerates, more refined control and cameras, sure, I'm down for all that.

Scaled down environments, minimap, linear levels, objective markers, obvious placement of items or places of interest, nope, that's not 'evolution' as far as I'm concerned, yet when you come down to it there lied the crux of most of the negative reviews on YL I read, sometimes explicitly and repeatedly stated like in Sterling's review, other times very heavily implied.

Which is all well and good, no one is disputing this fine gentlemen and women their right to kill off the 3D exploration platform game genre before it's even had the chance to come back. It's their subjective opinion to which they are 100% entitled to, and if it just happens to be influential enough to critically impact the chances of a game to be a comercial success, it's not their fault, is it? So long as they don't try to pass as fact stuff like the quotes OP mentioned. Or like "Out of all the generations of video games that era holds up the worst. ". Repeating it a lot of times won't make it true...

 

[show me your skeleton]

well, you know, when the game was literally funded by the fans who literally wanted a platform game circa 1998, it's kinda fair to say this.

it's still open to critique, regardless of how it was created.

 

[More_Badass]

But some of those same "assholes" gave Persona 5 a high score.

Persona 5 is snappier and faster than the typical idea people have when they think turn-based. Or at least, the kind of turn-based that is called obsolete and outdated

Which I assume is menu-based FF-style? Personally when I hear turn-based, I think XCOM and roguelikes

 

[Brashnir]

I completely agree here. I see some people bring up "collect-a-thon" dismissively, and they don't stop to think how derivations on that premise are constantly applied in modern game design.

If anything, the click(tap)-stuff-to-get-stuff compulsion loops of modern F2P games is a cynical distillation of the collection mechanic.

It has also infected a large portion of other game types as well because it is so psychologically crippling.

 

[Jawbreaker]

Persona 5 is snappier and faster than the typical idea people have when they think turn-based. Or at least, the kind of turn-based that is called obsolete and outdated

Which I assume is menu-based FF-style? Personally when I hear turn-based, I think XCOM and roguelikes

So it's a more modernized take on turn-based JRPGs, that are more palatable to your average person's expectations today? Perhaps ... evolved? ;]

 

[Spieler Eins]

Persona 5 is snappier and faster than the typical idea people have when they think turn-based. Or at least, the kind of turn-based that is called obsolete and outdated

So it's a more modernized take on turn-based JRPGs, that are more palatable to your average person's expectations today? Perhaps ... evolved? ;]

Other old school SMT games with outdated nineties presentation score in the 80s too. Undertale has like 95% also.

 

[JinjoUnchained]

If anything, the negative reviews have increased my hype. I have no problem going back to classic games without mini maps and flashing waypoints. Or games with outdated camera controls. Those things don't bother me all that much if the controls are fun and the game world is immersive. And YL looks strong in those regards, so I'm good.

Hence my hype for Yooka Laylie. I guess people like OP and I are out of touch with video game critics. But there's nothing wrong with that. They can sit around and bemoan the lack of dynamic lighting effects while I'll be off having fun.