Watch us play Yooka-Laylee: a pretty, messy successor to Banjo-Kazooie

Banjo-Kazooie was one of the standout platformers of the early 3D era, and even though that genre has fallen out of favor compared to shooters or open-world action games, some of the people responsible for that Nintendo 64 classic have come back with Yooka-Laylee.

Playtonic Games, a studio composed of former Rare employees, is releasing Yooka-Laylee for PC, Xbox One, and PlayStation 4 on April 11. Like Banjo-Kazooie, Yooka-Laylee has you controlling a pair of characters as one, cohesive unit. Instead of a bird and a bear, this time you’re a lizard and a bat, but that’s a new skin for an old, familiar control scheme of running and jumping. And this is the part that works best in Yooka-Laylee. The running and jumping feels nice, and it makes me want to hop around and explore the environment.