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After months of anticipation, Yooka-Laylee has finally arrived on Switch and it feels right at home. Playtonic's debut is a sprawling platformer with a focus on exploration and the jump to modern hardware has enabled its designers to create worlds much larger and more complex than the games which inspired it. And that's precisely why there has been some trepidation leading up to its release on Nintendo's hybrid. After all, Yooka-Laylee is a large-scale Unity game on the Switch and while we've seen a lot of Unity titles on the system since its launch, the average performance level hasn't always been optimal, even in relatively simple games.After handing PS4 and Xbox One conversion duties for the original release to Team 17, Playtonic itself handles the Switch conversion and it's clearly a lovingly crafted piece of work - and worry not, the quality of the visual feature set and performance level is generally excellent. What's interesting about this port is the approach: rather than brute-force PS4 and Xbox One assets into the Switch version, Playtonic has crafted brand new 3D art where required, better suited to the system's overall power level. On top of that, there are nips and tucks, but they're intelligently handled. Unless you're carrying out side-by-side comparisons, you'll struggle to tell the difference.
Of course, we've done just that, but rather than serve to the detriment of the new version, it only serves to highlight how much effort was poured into tweaking the visuals and presentation for the platform. On top of that, this is also the latest iteration of Yooka-Laylee, including various tweaks and changes designed to smooth out the experience. The camera system is improved, and the overall game simply feels more polished and buttoned up all around.
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