One of the criticisms I had of Yooka-Laylee [official site] - the crowdfunded 3D platforming sequel-to-the-N64-Banjo-Kazooie-games-in-all-but-name-and-animal-duo - was that the camera was a persistent problem. It wasn't a constantly bad experience, more that it was a low level irritant which kept rearing its head throughout. It looks like the team are endeavouring to improve the situation with a day-one patch for PC which aims to fix specific problems as well as general camera movement performance improvements.

The game doesn't actually release on PC until 11 April so it's really only reviewers and others with pre-release access who have experienced the problems but given they've been a recurring frustration in reviews and thus are presumably affecting people's likelihood of picking up the game if they were on the fence, it's good to know it might be improving.

The Yooka-Laylee QA team are still doing checks on the PC patch but I've confirmed with publishers Team 17 that it should cover the same ground as the other platforms so the more detailed patch notes which come via Eurogamer should hold true for us - skip over the list if you'd prefer to go in with zero knowledge of the worlds, by the way:

  • [Fixed] Camera will become locked in place after completing Gravity Room challenge in Galleon
  • [Fixed] Grappling the seeds as they break in Planker's challenge causes erratic behaviour in Moodymaze Marsh
  • [Fixed] Game softlocks and has to be reset if the player leaves the course and faints during the Nimble race in Tribalstack Tropics
  • [Fixed] Softlock will sometimes occur on the Hub C slide if the player faints at the same moment as the timer reaching zero
  • [Fixed] If the player leaves Brreeeze Block's room in the Icymetric Palace in Glitterglaze Glacier but remains in the world and returns to the same room then the isometric camera will be deactivated
  • [Fixed] If player is killed by a bizzy in hub B and knocked back into the archive door at the exact same time, the screen will still transition. When the player respawns, they will be unable to move
  • Performance improvements to various camera transitions in the introductory cut scene
  • Performance improvements to Shipwreck Creek and Hivory Towers. Various areas have been improved including camera movement
  • Performance improvements when using the light beam in the Icymetric Palace within Glitterglaze Glacier
  • Performance improvements during the House of Cards ball roll course in Capital Cashino
  • Performance improvements in the Bee-Bop arcade game

    • There are a few camera irritants which I don't *think* this addresses so they might need to be fixed in a later patch or simply chalked up to "limitations of creating a puzzle-platformer of this specific type and trying to offer one type of camera positioning in one section and a differing one in an adjacent area".

    I'll add that the things I suspect might not be covered only relate to your interactions with one or two structures so they aren't game-breaking. I'll try to take a look when the patch goes live and see if anything mega-funky is still happening. I also can't tell from this whether the camera movement changes might help with the flight controls being unwieldy. But anyway, good to know that some of the things I was bothered by in the review might abate a little.

    I also want to reiterate that I enjoyed the game despite some of the camera stuff and some unfortunate boss fights in case that gets lost in coverage of fixes! Full review is here and game is out on 11 April for PC which will be after this patch has gone live.