Tearaway Unfolded (PS4, 2015)
Tearaway Unfolded is a platformer made by Media Molecule, the same people who did (do? are they still a thing) the LittleBigPlanet games. At least, it's a remake of the PS Vita game Tearaway, with some extra stuff added in they couldn't fit in the handheld. You play as Iota, or Atoi depending on which gender character you pick, who has to go and fix a hole in the sky. They do this with the help of the You, ie the player, who interacts with the game using the controller.
Saying the player interacts with the game using the controller is, well, ridiculous, so let me explain. The game is your standard 3D platformer, although special moves like jumping and attacking are unlocked as you progress through each chapter. Among these abilities are a few forms of interaction with the player, like using the touchpad on the controller to create wind in-game, or pressing it to use pads to jump higher than normal. From what I've read, Unfolded is quite substantially different from the original game on Vita, but I still dread to think what playing this game on a handheld must have been like. I now know what it must have been like trying to play a Nintendo 64 for the first time and holding that controller, as I have both hands at the sides doing different things then having to switch to the middle.
That isn't to say the controls are a downside to the game. They feel more like an inconvenience that's a result of the sheer amount of things packed in. It's also one of the few times I can remember using motion controls with any sort of originality. You can shine a line on screen to interact with the environment. You can pick up objects, throw them "in" to the controller, then aim at targets you need to hit in-game with the motion controls. Although it can get awkward at times, the controls and concept of the You (more on that later) combine well to create a sense of immersion you don't normally expect with this sort of gameplay.
One little sidenote I should mention here, on multiple occasions the game bugs you to download the companion app, where someone else can control aspects of the game. I'd assume things like the wind and other secondary elements I mentioned. I can't stress strongly enough how things like this can f*** right off. Why is a game spending so much time trying to direct my focus on to something other than itself? If you want it to be a co-op game where two people using certain techniques can combine to make the gameplay easier then great, but with the story in mind that's probably not the intention, since it's very strongly focused on the player character being alone in the world. I don't like the idea that games are encouraging the player's attention to be elsewhere while they're playing the game. That isn't going to end well.
Sadly, the platforming elements themselves can be a pain. The one thing you want from a platformer is precision. You want the thing you're controlling to react consistently and instantaneously to your inputs, and you want the environment to be consistent and predictable. Neither of these things happen. It does that really annoying thing where you can be moving and jumping at the same time and you somehow time it wrong at the edge of something, running straight off rather than jumping. Sometimes if you're jumping to a smaller platform it can be hard to judge the depth and trajectory of your jumps, making it feel like guesswork where you're going to land. Dying isn't a problem as you respawn nearby instantly, but it's still frustrating when it feels like a lottery put you there.
By far the biggest irritant in this game however is the camera, which is responsible for most of the complaints in the previous paragraph. You can control it with the right stick like any game, but a lot of the time it moves where it wants to regardless of what you're trying to do with it. Usually when this happens it moves really close to the player, or gets stuck behind an object. Better yet, sometimes it does it on its own. My favourite time was when I was running along in a level with no problems only for the camera to start rotating. I stopped moving and corrected it. The camera kept turning again. I did a full 360 in the direction the camera was moving, and the problem stopped. A camera that acts like a twisted wire in a platformer with poor depth perception during jumps isn't a good thing. I'm honestly struggling to remember the last time I played with a camera this bad.
These problems coalesce awkwardly in the game's combat. That hole in the sky led to a bunch of things called Scraps flooding in, which are small boxes with legs and a single eye. There's a range of them, some can fly, some are on stilts and shoot at you, some stack up in a big tower. In combat sections the game can throw loads of these things at you at once, and the awkward camera and sometimes clunky controls make taking them out more annoying than it should be. You can only take two or three hits before dying and there's no immediately obvious health indicator to encourage wariness. Half the time I didn't even realise I was getting hit. Things like this, the camera and the platforming, coupled with the rate at which new gameplay elements are introduced, all contribute to the sense that the game has a lot of content and innovation crammed in, but little chance to properly explore and enjoy them.
On that note, the game is surprisingly short. There are 18 chapters and you can rattle through each in about half an hour. Some are shorter. Some have gameplay mechanics that only exist there, such as the accordion you can use to suck up enemies and fire them out, like a simplified version of the controller trick. There are three over-arching areas the chapters are set in and it feels like there's very little connecting them. The third section in particular feels like a lot of conceptual stuff that didn't fit into to the Vita game - it doesn't fit in here either, but it's easier to play - thrown on. The pacing doesn't always feel like a problem because the base elements are the same, but so much of the story and gameplay comes and goes so quickly the game ends up being a lot less memorable than it should or could have been.
I think I like the general concept of the story, even though it suffers as a result of that rushing. It ends up being a BioShock-esque self-referential subversion of the typical format of games, where the world is collapsing because the Scraps are trying to build a controller like the You has, since ultimately the You (ie the player) has ultimate control over everything that happens in the world. It's unquestionable that the people who came up with this story felt pretty smug and satisfied at how clever it is, because I would in that situation. The pacing of the game probably helps slightly in this sense, since you can't dwell on any of the holes for too long. Ultimately I think it's good to see games with this level of questioning and intelligence in them, even if the way it's presented isn't perfect.
With that in mind, it's worth mentioning the actual style of the game as a final point. It's made by the LittleBigPlanet team, and it shows. There's a similar art style, hell there's a similar irritatingly vague platforming style, but there's something... youthful about the whole thing. I spent most of my time playing the game to think of the right word and all I could come up with was "childlike", but that's not right. It's not a game primarily for children. The controls are too annoying. But there's an overwhelming sense of imagination and creativity that's perfect for a game aimed at a younger audience. There are even things called Papercraft items which you can take a picture of in-game then go online to get instructions of how to make that design in origami. It's another example of how rich and content-packed the game is, but I think there are too many obstacles between the problems I've detailed and a pre-teen audience.
There's not really much point in summing up after all of that, but I'll give it a shot. There's a lot of stuff in this game, maybe too much. It's fun to play when the controls aren't making you tear your hair out, and there's an attempt at a truly thought-provoking story that's probably in the wrong game. Neither this or the original Vita version sold very well and it's a shame when you consider how much effort obviously went into it, but I think it's a bit too rough and unpolished to have expected anything else.
