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Just got these three for MSRP from the most unlikely place I would have looked for amiibo. Dover Air Force Base Army Surplus store. To me, more exact a fellow amiibo collector on Facebook who lives in the south part of Delaware contacted me about them and I was super happy to score these for at retail price as they are hard to come by. I managed to pay him via PayPal and met up with him close to the base to pick them up. Waddle Dee now completes the Kirby line for me. I was surprised how big the Detective Pikachu ended up being as I missed it back at Best Buy a while back and its good to get the Splatoon 3 pack. Still may consider getting the recolored ones and I still need to get the Splatoon 2 amiibo which I originally thought released in a three pack but only came out in singles in the US. Only Octolings got a three pack.

When former Rare employees took to the internet to announce a spiritual successor to Banjo-Kazooie, fans took notice, spurring one of the most successful Kickstarter campaigns of 2015. It's clear there was a lot of nostalgia love for a 3D platformer starring an anthropomorphic animal duo, down the visual style and nonsense squeaking noises during dialogue. The heyday of the genre was squarely in the late 90s though, and recreating that formula on a modern console leads to mixed results. It's a normal day for Yooka and Laylee (a chameleon and a bat, respectively) when an old book that Laylee found is suddenly spirited away through the air. The evil Capital B and his assistant Dr. Quack are gathering up every book they can to find a powerful magical tome, until Yooka and Laylee decide to put a stop to their evil machinations. The writing in Yooka-Laylee feels right at home with the likes of Banjo-Kazooie. It's goofy and cartoonish, full of meta gaming references, and even though some of the humor doesn't quite land perfectly (jokes in written form can be clumsy sometimes, especially with slow scrolling text speed), the game still has a light, kid-friendly charm to it. Anyone that has played one of Rare's classic collect-a-thon platformers from the 90s will feel immediately at home with Yooka-Laylee—starting up the game truly feels like stepping twenty years into the past, when 3D platformers were all the rage and full of colorful animal characters and hundreds of collectibles to grab. At its core, it feels like Yooka-Laylee could have been made just after Banjo-Tooie, as if this is some forgotten title that was dusted off, given a new coat of paint, and released on modern consoles. This game has all of the essentials: you start off in a hub world and enter different themed worlds, each of which is an open 3D environment full of items to collect—primarily Pagies, the torn pages of Laylee's magic book, but also currency for buying upgrades. Each world feels large and sprawling but not so large that you'll easily get lost—some kind of map for each area still would have been appreciated, though. Still, there's a decent variety of challenges within each world and as in so many games there's an addictive quality to picking up one collectible after another. The flip side of this coin is that Yooka-Laylee also retains many of the annoying quirks of 90s 3D platformers, and at times fails to innovate on the genre. For the most part they're little things, but they add up to put a damper on the fun, light-hearted atmosphere of the game. For one thing, hit boxes can be a little inconsistent, particularly with projectile or aerial attacks. Although the game includes a first-person aiming mode as well, this is usually too slow when you're in the middle of fighting minions. This sort of control quirk feels tied to the game's 90s roots, but certainly should have been updated for a modern game release. The game's meandering pace can be a little annoying at times as well, due to lack of direction, retreading previous worlds with new abilities, or occasionally retreading large parts of a world due to failing a challenge. The pacing isn't inherently bad but it adds a certain tedium that isn't alleviated by the wide open spaces and lackluster enemies in each world. The biggest issue that feels too beholden to the past is the controls. For the most part they're fine and give you a decent degree of control over Yooka and Laylee, but overall the controls just don't feel as sharp as they should be for a platformer. Your movements can feel stilted at times, and flying in particular is an awkward endeavor. The camera can also get a big hectic in tight spaces as it struggles to find a decent angle—thankfully at least you have the option of using a classic mode where the camera naturally centers behind you and a modern mode that gives you more control. The classic may be traditional for this kind of game but it feels too inconsistent and unwieldy, especially when modern controllers all have a second control stick anyway. Even modern mode has its issues though, and there are few things more annoying than failing a challenge simply because the camera won't cooperate. The game's presentation does a better job of bridging the N64-era inspired roots and modern aesthetics—mostly. Because while the character design is cute, most of the creatures don't have a ton of visual personality (the game mostly relies on its unending supply of puns to drum up some charisma) and the environment design is extremely hit or miss with some truly uninspired scenery at times. The soundtrack fares better overall, though it also has its ups and downs. Still, there are several great tunes, even if they are all too often restricted to smaller scenarios rather than a world's main background music track. Yooka-Laylee takes around 12 hours to finish, but that's an estimate for just the bare amount of completion. It's no surprise that as a collect-a-thon platformer there are plenty more optional challenges to tackle in order to 100% complete the game. The journey there can get a little tiresome at times but if you take the game's meandering pacing in stride it's easy to double the length of the game. For better and for worse, Yooka-Laylee faithfully recreates the 90s collect-a-thon platformer, with all of its charms and flaws. The developers have made some critical mistakes in not taking more care to modernize some of the core aspects of the game such as smooth camera movement or tighter controls, but the overall package is still a charming, nostalgic adventure that feels right at home next to the Banjo-Kazooie games. Yooka-Laylee may rely upon that nostalgia a bit too much at times, but for fans of this subgenre of platformers who haven't seen a game like this in years, the game's flaws and quirks are a small price to pay. Rating: 7 out of 10 Pagies

Got my first Monster Hunter Stories amiibo. I have another on the way. Second Monster Hunter amiibo is now here.