You are a mother fox who awakes to find that your three babies have disappeared. As you set off through the vast wilderness to find them, a voice begins to speak. It's the voice of a man named Joseph. At first he talks about your journey, but then the focus switches to his own story.

You've spent a handful of hours scurrying around thick jungles, frozen snow fields, and gloopy swamps to find enough shiny gold book pages to complete Yooka-Laylee. But wait! The game wants you to collect even more. Thankfully, with some out of bounds trickery, you can ignore that and skip to the final boss.

Yooka-Laylee recaptures some of the best aspects of platforming. You run, jump and climb your way around dazzling levels. But it also tries too hard to recreate the past without building upon the lessons old games taught us. We take a closer look in this critical video.

Yooka-Laylee is a bright and enthusiastic throwback to classic 3D platforming. It is adventurous and full of discoveries. It is silly and irreverent, never taking itself seriously. But it also wears out its welcome fast, spiraling players into a ceaseless collectathon full of frustrating puzzles, technical difficulties, and aimlessness. It has brought back the best of 3D platforming, but also the worst.

Video: The simple act of jumping can make or break a 2D platformer. In the first episode of Mechanically Speaking, Game Array explores how developers balance responsiveness and fairness to the player to make these movements magical.