Yooka-Laylee

If you've been hankering after the days of the iconic Banjo-Kazooie, or if you want to introduce someone to that style of game, we can't recommend Yooka-Laylee highly enough.

This is a game that proudly models itself on that 1996 title, created by the same team, but with all the improvements and quality you'd expect of a game made in 2020: a deliciously fresh take on the old recipe!

Yooka is a heroic lizard who can whack anything that crosses his path, while Laylee, his follower, is a sarcastic bat who can use sonar to reveal hidden objects. One day, Yooka and Laylee get sucked into the golden pages of their book. The culprit? One Capital B. and his trusty associate Dr. Quack, who are out to steal every book in the world.

All the trappings of a 3D platformer are here, including a spectacular central hub that leads to five vast worlds. Indeed, the game has all the charm of an old N64 platformer: the polished environments are packed with details and colours that give the game a magical visual aesthetic, while the writing is as sarcastic and irreverent as back in the '90s, with the fourth wall being broken at regular intervals!

Kids love this game and will always want to come back for more.

There are items to collect everywhere, transformations to unlock along the way, and loads of other brilliant new ideas are revealed as you progress through the game... but we won't spoil it for you here!

We liked the '90s dialogue: the characters express themselves through grunts, but the subtitles are always hilarious.

We loved the crazy, bouncy soundtrack that really does sound like the music you'd hear in Donkey Kong 64 or Banjo-Kazooie. It's a perfect fit for the game, and some of the tunes will definitely get stuck in your head!

Our favourite part? The gameplay that is about so much more than just collecting items. Each world contains a new transformation that lets our dynamic duo team up to create a mutant with special abilities, like a helicopter or a plant that sprays acid. Each of the transformations brings a unique new way to play the game!

Our advice? Remember that a cute dinosaur runs a video game arcade with plenty of minigames, and a new one is unlocked in each world you visit. These minigames give you a break from the action, and you can go back at any time to try and beat your score. Games within a game that can be played with three other players in a special game mode separate from the main story.

Then there's the multiplayer mode, which takes you right back to the days of Super Mario Galaxy. In the main game mode, a second player can take control of the Bee Team and go about collecting butterflies and feathers while helping the first player out by deactivating traps.

A must-play game for any fans of quality 3D platformers.