Yooka-Laylee’s Spin-Off Is Free On Epic

Monday, we discovered when Alexx, Lisa, and myself will be ruining the future generations with poor education, this month’s Prime Gaming was revealed, and a shadow puzzle-based game got a release date. Tuesday, another farming-sim is coming to PC, Final Fantasy VII turned 25 telling me my age in May, and another Rogue-like/lite is releasing into early access. Wednesday, we discovered the FTC may be looking at the ABK deal with Microsoft, Game Pass titles were announced, Team17 spun on its heels hearing my anger, and Life is Strange was released again. Thursday, Valve announced the Steam sales for this year.

Moving on to the Epic Games Store and the free game for this week, we have one one that I don’t particularly care for at all: Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair. I’m all for nostalgia, I’ve been returning to a number of PS2 games lately. I just don’t care about the Yooka-Laylee series on the whole because it is trying to capture nostalgia without anything beyond game design. Anyone could crowdfund a game based on nostalgia for those games of our youth, but that doesn’t make it good or even better than what we once had.

Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair is the spin-off/sequel to the 3D platformer mimicking the Banjo-Kazooie releases of the late 90s, this time going to Nintendo’s other platformer from Rare, Donkey Kong Country. Not that we’re meant to focus on what I like, but I am here to give a recommendation/pad out enough to hit a word count. Look, The Impossible Lair is actually good, despite its lack of originality and it does bring a greater sense of polish than its 3D counterpart. My entire issue is simply my own lack of nostalgia for what it is doing. You may enjoy it, and you should pick it up, but I am left wondering why I should take time out of my schedule to play it when I won’t.

All this week, you can pick up Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair on the Epic Games Store until the 10th of February. From there on, we’ll be sailing the seas and singing about the wind that stays behind, not knowing just how far I’ll go. Windbound is a survival-y craft ’em up RPG where you play as a woman who owns a raft with a sail and no chicken. If you feel there aren’t enough Moana references this week (or too many), you might want to find me online and yell profanity until I stop and move on to Encanto.