I drunkenly signed up to upgrade my PS Plus membership in order to receive access to over 100 games all at once the other day and now I am faced with how the hell am I going to get through all of. Therefore, I have decided that I am not going to get through all of them, perhaps I won't even get through any of them. What I am going to do is that I am going to try every single one of them even if the subject doesn't interest me at all. A lot of the time you can't tell what a game is all about until you actually play it anyway so here's to trying new things, I guess.
I only have a couple of rules and that is that i am not going to try any games that are made by AAA studios. Those games are already well-known to everyone including me and therefore there isn't anything very exciting about giving them a try. I also will spend at least an hour on a game even if I initially don't like it. If a game truly is engaging, I will carry on playing it in addition to any new games I download. Otherwise they get deleted because I have a limited hard drive just like anyone else.
On this day I took a random game called Tearaway and just like the last ones that I dove into, I knew absolutely nothing about it before downloading it.
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The game is technically called Tearaway: Unfolded and perhaps this is a sequel of sorts. I have no idea because I do zero research on these games before playing them.
The story is a bit drawn out at the beginning of the game as they establish that "You," as in the person who is holding the controller, is actually the active participant in the game and you are a god-like creature of sorts and and can control the environment with the tools that you get along the way. In this regard the game is kind of like metroidvania style game because after around 2 hours I did see several areas that could be revisited if you really wanted to. I did not.
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The graphical / art style of this game is very unique IMO as everything that is in the playable environment is made of paper including the character that you control. The sounds of paper unfolding is kind of a near part of the adventure and all environments that can be interacted with behave exactly like a piece of paper would be expected to. I admire that they went this route and it is built into the story as well.
The game is very casual as you can't die in the traditional sense, only be "mailed" back to a checkpoint which is normally very close to where you stepped off the side of a platforming area. Most of what it is that you need to do is spelled out for you early on in the game and if you for some reason forget, there is a squirrel character that will pop up on the bottom of the screen should it become evident to the game that you are kind of at a loss as to what you should do next.
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It appears as though this game was designed with all ages in mind because the puzzles, at least the ones I encountered in about 2 hours of gameplay, were very simplistic and easy to figure out. This appeals to me because when a game starts to feel like a Myst experience I will quickly just check online as to what the answer is, just like most people would do. I don't think that this will ever be something that someone in this game needs to do.
The controls are intuitive but my only gripe would probably be that this game uses the large button in the middle of the controller very frequently. This is just a personal thing but my hands start to hurt anytime I am required to use that button in conjunction with any of the traditional buttons. I realize that it has to be this way though because there really isn't any other way to draw your finger across something other than using that.
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There are times in the game where you need to open your "craft box" and draw something like a crown or clouds and it is kind of funny because no matter how terrible your drawing is, that exact thing will actually be used in the graphics of the game from that point forward. You can always change it if you want to but in my case I accidentally gave my little guy that I am controlling two mouths. The system accepted it and now I guess I am just going to have two mouths!
As far as the overall world is concerned it functions like any 3D platformer would but at least in what I have seen recently it is far more understandable than other games like it because while it does try to be in part, open-world, you are definitely constrained as far as where you can actually go on the map. While not totally linear, they do kind of force you down a certain road.
Collectibles are prevalent and all over the place but they are not required as far as advancing the story is concerned. Even the confetti, which is the currency in the game, is completely optional and is only used for cosmetic upgrades to your character. Since I don't care about any of that I stopped pursuing confetti really early on and it had no effect on the gameplay.
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The game tries to be spooky in parts such as when you enter the Scarecrow's lair, but this is only in a very childish way. It's more humorous than anything else because the NPC's keep telling you how terrifying the Scarecrow is and when you encounter him he is actually a really nice guy who is just scary looking. Maybe there is some sort of lesson in there for kids.
Things I really likes about this game was that is was very casual, easy to pick up, and would remind you of the controls anytime that it became apparent that you were having trouble. The game is designed so that players are always moving forward and I like that. I also like how they utilized the speaker that is inside the controller that I had actually forgotten even existed. Since we are meant to be capturing various things and keeping them in our controller, it is kind of funny when my PS4 controller would make squirrel sounds to remind me that I am currently in the possession of a squirrel in my god-like hands. Some people have called this "breaking the 4th wall" and I think it is a nice concept.
There really isn't anything I didn't like about this game other than the excessive use of the central pad and that is most likely my own fault.
Of course this title will be far too easy to anyone that is expecting any sort of hardcore gameplay because that is definitely not what this is nor is it even possible to step the difficulty up. You are meant to progress through this game, not get stuck in parts of it for ages.
I'm going to delete this game because although I do think it is a lot of fun and is very nicely made, I have to move on to other stuff. There is a good chance I will return to it in the future though.
Games played so far in my trip through all the "Extra" games on Playstation Plus
- Windbound (survival game with rogue-like elements - not recommended)
- Magicka 2 (top-down humorous multiplayer hack and slash-sort with immense spell system - maybe recommended)
- Tearaway: Unfolded (charming casual 3D platformer with inventive graphics and gameplay designed for all ages - recommended for casual players)