Yooka-Laylee was certainly not without its issues at launch, and not all of them were technical. Despite genuinely improving on the formula of Banjo-Kazooie by making collectibles more meaningful, Playtonic’s revival of the 3D platformer genre had plenty of quirks that could and often did hamper player enjoyment.
Back in June, Yooka-Laylee was patched on PC, fixing almost all of these nagging issues that made the game less enjoyable. Today, that huge update finally came to consoles, with a few improvements on top of the original patch as well.
You can read the full patch notes below, but the main highlights include the ability to skip cutscenes, turn down that ear-splitting gibberish voice, reduce the frequency of those sound effects, speed through that dialogue, add better signposting to find the next levels and, perhaps most importantly, a new optional camera mode that gives the player full control of where it’s pointed.
- New music added to the pause menu
- New manual camera mode added with minimal assist (updated with further viewing distance)
- Camera design improvements throughout game (less scripted cameras, door cams now appear behind player etc)
- Pagies have added signposts to Hivory Towers to help guide players to new worlds
- Design tweaks to all arcade games
- Improved speed when scrolling through Totals Menu
- New option for shorter ‘gibberish’ voice sound FX
- New speech volume option
- New ability to speed through dialogue by holding Y
- Cut-scenes can now be skipped with Y
- New moves section added to pause menu, with image guide
- Restart option added in the pause menu during arcade games and Kartos challenges
- ‘Sonar-able’ objects now have clearer visual identity
- Laser move no longer requires player to crouch
- Minecart control and hitbox improvements, plus new visual effects
- Transformation control improvements
- Improved first-person aiming controls
- New first-person aiming control options added
- Improved flying controls
- When transformed, collecting butterflies now restores energy
- Hunter tonic now tracks the last 30 Quills and Casino Tokens, in addition to the Health and Power Extenders. It will also whistle at the location of the closest rare collectable.
- Health UI is now always visible when low
- Design tweaks in various areas (Black Hole in One, Gloomy Gem Grotto etc)
- Arcade games now support per player control settings, such as vibration, inverted aim and sensitivity
- Improved Rampo boss fight
- Performance improvements
- Audio improvements
