Is it me or it's stupid to lock the Toolbox behind a pre-order wall. Wtf.

One question (whose answer could be a dealbreaker): Is there an insta-fail stealth section (or any similarly obnoxious event) anywhere in the game?

Edit: Why was this post low rated? (I also still need an answer.)

I don't think you are right. If they just wanted to avoid controversy the company would have issued a blanket statement and gotten it over with. Instead their employees went on social media and started mocking backers and people who had pre-ordered; I remember one blue-haired guy making fun of people's anime avatars when he himself looked like an anime character. Here is a good summary (marginally NSFW, uses foul language):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sRNDnR9Za4M

They knew very well what they did, they wanted to virtue-signal about how good they are. If they really wanted to avoid controversy they could have just said "we hired John Jaffari for his voice work only, none of his political opinion is in the game in any way" and be done with it.

It's kind of unfortunate that the whole JonTron thing is all I ever heard about this game. This whole thing is so ridiculous. I mean, Jazzpunk features voice work from Jim Sterling and Zoe Quinn and I consider both of those rather deeply unpleasant people. But, lo and behold, that hasn't diminished my enjoyment of Jazzpunk in any way whatsoever.

Add to that the comments left here by Kickstarter backers who now get the short end of the stick for financing the bloody thing. They remind me of my own hassles I had with games I helped kickstart, until I smartened up and stopped backing altogether.

Oh yeah, AND it's published by Team17, which has a less than stellar track record when it comes to keeping gog and Steam versions in sync update-/content-wise.

Too many red flags. I'll pass.

What, wait, are they actually charging for the manual? Seriously? Hoping I have misunderstood it

Two things are wrong with this:

(1) How is this virtue signalling? Do you have any proof the people who made the decision don't actually find his views on immigration abhorrent and decided to drop him simply to score points?

(2) "Virtue signalling" and "avoiding controversy" aren't opposites, the former is a subset of the latter. By definition, if they only wanted to pretend to appeal to the "politically correct" people, they did this with an ulterior purpose in mind, which is minimising controversy and trying to have it cause the least damage to their sales.

That's a fair point, I guess. After all, as the saying goes: don't attribute to malice what can be explained by stupidity (or something like that)

No, avoiding controversy is staying out of it. Distance yourself from both sides, or-even better-just don't say anything. A few months ago there was a media shitstorm against James Rolfe (the guy who plays the Angry Video Game Nerd) because he said he wouldn't watch the new Ghostbusters movie.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hz8X2A7wHyQ

How did he respond? Not at all, and eventually it just blew over as quickly as it started. And you know why? Because none of those people gave a single damn about the movie, they wanted James to beg for mercy on before the cult of Social Justice, and when they saw that he simply did not care they moved on.

Since 3D platformers are not my genre I have been getting more entertainment from this than I would get from the game :D

Apparently, somebody discovered a way to skip a large portion of the game, making it possible to complete the game with far fewer collectibles than intended.

(I still want an answer regarding the question I posted earlier in this thread.)

Edit: Also, why was *this* post low rated? What's wrong with discussing the game (and asking a question about it) in the release thread?

Regarding the second point, I agree that one might stem from another but "virtue signalling" does not imply someone doesn't hold such views - it simply means they feel the need to highlight their "virtue", whatever it might actually be. I believe the term is politically neutral too - someone who thinks the Third Reich was totally cool and Hitler did nothing wrong could "virtue signal" about it too when talking with someone. A view which, by the way, I'm absolutely against and find completely reprehensible (<- see how virtuous I am here?)

Anyway, they went well beyond mere "avoiding controversy" in their statement when they explicitly stated that the studio has political values which are the cause for removal of JonTron's voice clips - and subsequently claimed this is done "to make a game anyone can enjoy" (except, I presume, people who disagree with this action?) It's a self-contradictory goal and I don't believe it one bit - it was either a political matter or a cynical attempt at damage control which (predictably, given all of the recent drama related to "diversity" in video games) misfired. The minimal approach of "he's not representing us with his personal views, also he was not on our team and just provided some voice smaples" would've worked much better since blaming a video game studio for someone's private views would be unreasonable in the extreme.

This is something of a personal belief of mine and not exactly pertaining JonTron who, I believe, was not employed or contracted by Playtronic at all, nevertheless it's something I find relevant - companies shouldn't have political values or express them at all. How exactly would such a thing be decided? Is a political stance of a company something a higher-up decides arbitrarily or is everyone on the team vetted for their political views before they're even employed? Are talented people whose views are deemed incompatible simply refused employment or given "the boot"?

Perhaps it's influenced by how labour laws work in my country, where it is explicitly forbidden to discriminate in matters of employment and its termination based especially on "gender, age, disability, race, religion, nationality, political beliefs, membership in unions, ethnic origins, religious denomination, sexual orientation" as well as "mode of employment" (that is, full time or part time and so on) of an employee, but situation such as this is just not right. Granted, JonTron likely can't be called an employee and at most was contracted for the grunts he made, but I believe my point still stands.

My apologies if the post is too long, I really wanted to make my view as clear as possible.

Sure, but racism isn't a political belief, or at the very least not a protected form of it.

Which is the entire crux of the matter here. He said outrageously racist things, like saying that black people are naturally predisposed to being criminals, or that even if immigrants did perfectly assimilate to the culture they would still be a problem because they would enter the gene pool. If saying another race is inferior and arguing in favor of the purity of a race isn't racist, then I don't know what is.

Then a bunch of other people come and minimize the issue by saying "What?! I guess nobody can express themselves now! Here comes the PC police attacking anything they don't agree with."

No. If what is being said is just racism, no, nobody has to tolerate it. And the idea that "apparently everything is racist now" isn't true, it just is being used to defend obviously racist things, like what JonTron said.

On a different note, ignoring the politics and what not I snagged the game and am having a blast. This really is the spirit of the 3rd Banjo-Kazooie game out in the open while also still feeling like a Rare game in general. I'd recommend waiting for a price drop of course, but those who enjoy 3D collect-a-thon platformers and possibly also Rare titles will enjoy it.

I disagree; if you disallow political views, you are severely limiting the speech of the companies and their owners. In particular, if a company wants to establish a view of being accepting towards all people, including those in stigmatized minorities (racial, sexual, gender, ability, or other minority types I haven't listed (and can't think of)), that will be seen by many people as being political.

Consider two examples:

1. Company that makes solar panels. Is it wrong for said company to be in favor of green energy? After all, that is (let's suppose) the primary feature of the business; hence it makes perfect sense for that company to hold that view.

2. Company that makes wheelchairs or other devices aimed at people with disabilities. Wouldn't it make sense for said company to support laws that mandate such things like allowing wheelchair access to buildings?

I'm 8 hours in and I'm really enjoying it, a lot of the negative reviews that aren't politically motivated really are missing the point, it really feels like a nicely polished lost Rare game from their heyday and that's how it should be. Controls are tight, levels are big, music is great, animation is splendid and even the camera isn't too bad. Seriously the amount of crying over the camera I hear is pure hyperbole, it seems people have forgotten just how few 3D platformers are lucky enough to have a camera anywhere near this stable.

Also it just went from 4th to 3rd in the popular list so I'm glad to see it doing well on here despite the drama.

Thanks for sharing your experience with the game, and great to hear that you're having a good time with it!

Most of the people complaining about Yooka-Laylee ( or the companies behind it ) had no interest in the game to begin with, so it's not surprising that it's doing well despite the shitstorm. So far I've mostly heard positive feedback, from those who are actually playing it.

I was really looking forward to the release myself, so whenever I come here and see all the off-topic drama, I just want to barf rainbows all over the place and close the browser.