Tiny Review: Tearaway ⊟
Tearaway feels like a AAA game. I don’t necessarily mean that in terms of production values, but rather in the sense that, like the stereotype of modern big-budget games, Media Molecule’s Vita platformer is strictly linear, guiding you from spectacle to spectacle as smoothly as possible. It is, to use the common comparison, an amusement park ride, complete with occasional keepsake photos.
But I’m not denouncing this game, despite its trivial combat, nonexistent challenge and rudimentary puzzles. For once, that kind of handholding is okay because Tearaway uses this AAA framework not to show us, like, how simultaneously cool and sad war is or whatever, but to show us something beautiful.
And it’s really, really beautiful.
Three things that are fab:
- As you play Tearaway, you find “blank” items and characters that, when photographed with the in-game camera, unlock a papercraft model on tearaway.me. You can make physical mementos of the things you saw in the game! The commingling of the physical world with the in-game world is not only appropriate to the setting of the game (which puts your face inside the sun and has you poking your fingers into the world to move objects via the rear touchpad), it results in cute stuff on your desk.
- Tearaway makes some of the smartest use yet of the Vita’s various inputs. The aforementioned rear touchpad use is hilarious and cool, and accompanied by lots and lots of touchscreen stuff. It’s all totally intuitive, as you pull on tabs to unfold paper staircases and pull rolled paper bridges out between platforms. And, of course, draw and cut out decorations to apply to yourself and other characters.
- The ending isn’t exactly a shock, but talking about it too much might still be kind of spoilery. So I’ll just say it’s gorgeous and perfect.
Three things that are butt:
- Combat really is simple to such a degree that it’s unnecessary. Occasionally some little cube guys will show up, and you dodge them, then pick them up and throw them. Every time. Later, you get even more attacks you can use, and the enemies don’t really get any more complicated.
- As cool as the rear touchpad is in this game, it’s still the rear touchpad, and can be finicky. It frequently just lost track of my fingers while I was pushing a platform around, or tracked another finger I didn’t realize was on the touchpad.
- The in-game camera item is great, with all kinds of optional filters and lenses that you can unlock… but the other camera, the one that, like, shows you where you are on screen while you’re moving around, is pretty frustrating. Even though death is totally not a big deal in this game, it’s annoying to die because the camera swung around right before a pit.
Score:
A moose whose pelt is a picture of my cats
BUY PS Vita, Tearaway, upcoming games
Tiny Cartridge’s review of Tearaway is based on a copy provided by Sony.
