I was visiting my brother the day after I bought this game and played it for a bit while visiting. He walked by and asked me, “Are you playing a knock-off Crash Bandicoot?” He was wrong with his assessment of this game, of course. At that point, I thought he was wrong because I was so early in the experience and didn’t have a grasp on the flaws of the game. In retrospect, He’s actually wrong because this is a Banjo Kazooie rip-off with a dash of Sonic Adventure.
My brother being wrong about stuff isn’t uncommon (He tried to tell me Newton’s Third Law of Motion made no sense one time), but I think that just demonstrates the significance of the fact that even he was able to tell this game was nothing special. Honestly though, I knew that going in. I had seen enough of Ty the Tasmanian Tiger to know it would probably be derivative of those two games. I knew it would be ludicrous to expect even a 7/10 experience from it. I just wanted to play a decent 3D Platformer. But the problem lies therein: This game is hardly a 3D Platformer.
I talked about this briefly in my Spyro 2 review, but there’s a lot of 3D Platformers where Platforming takes a backseat to other elements. Most of this seemingly started with Banjo-Kazooie, which is the game that cemented the ‘Collectathon’ genre: Platformers where you must collect a lot of things. Banjo itself de-emphasized platforming a lot, but it was still there. Every level had one or two focal points that the player has to climb to get a Jiggy. The moveset doesn’t have the flow of a Mario game or the sort, but it is a platforming moveset. While I’m not huge on the minigames, they’re inoffensive at the end of the day. A lot of games copied the core structure of Banjo-Kazooie but missed elements like the aforementioned that made it good, such as Ty the Tasmanian Tiger.
How much platforming is actually in this game? Not much. Your moveset consists of a jump, glide, a homing attack, and throwing boomerangs. Level design doesn’t really enhance the platforming either; It’s all very basic platforms and obstacles, and the most interesting things get is hitting coconut trees with boomerangs to create platforms. That happens once in the game. There’s no sense of momentum either. The homing attack may sound cool, but all it amounts to is mashing a button in certain situations. The platforming is bare. I’m not exaggerating, God of War II has just as in-depth platforming as this game. I mean, it has a double jump and glide, so I don’t think what I’m saying is facetious. So what else is there in Ty the Tasmanian Tiger? Well, random busywork. Turret sections, killing random enemies, annoying escort missions, collecting random macguffins, etc.... The game does have the good idea of having race sections in every level, but even those are pretty dull overall.
One of the levels in this game has you riding this big bull thing. You can’t get off of it. You can’t jump while on the bull. Think about that. There’s an entire level in this game where you can’t jump. In a 3D Platformer. So… there’s like 72 Thunder Eggs in this game (Think Stars, Jiggys, Tickets, etc…). 8 of those are in this Outback level. Imagine you were playing Doom, with its 36 levels in total, and suddenly, midway through the game, you just can’t shoot any guns for four levels. Instead, you’re now engaging in sword combat for the next four levels. After these four levels, you never touch the sword again. That is the equivalent of this level in Ty the Tasmanian Tiger.
The thing is, even though I understand why so many games were made like this, I’m still confused about one thing: Why do people like games like this, or at least are fine with them? Let me be clear: I am happy if you enjoy this game. Getting upset because someone else enjoys something that isn’t hurting anybody is probably the dumbest thing a person can do. But… WHY?!?! What about it is fun? I’m sure that if the hypothetical Doom situation I concocted actually happened, people would be pissed, so why is it acceptable here? You could argue that people don’t love this game anyway, but even in beloved games like Crash 3, Spyro 2, and Sonic Adventure 2, these kinds of diversions are abundant, so why do people love those games? Why?
Well, I have a theory. Imagine, for a moment, you wanted to make a First-Person Shooter. What would you need, at minimum? Well, you’d need some movement options such as running. You’d need at least one gun. You’d need enemies to shoot. You’d need levels for all of this to take place in. Code all of that up and you have a very barebones FPS.
Let’s do this with a 3D Platformer. You need movement options, with the bare minimum probably being running and jumping. You need a level to do it in. And… That’s it. That is all you need to make a 3D Platformer. It won’t be good, but it will be a 3D Platformer.
I think that when you realize this, why so many 3D Platformers deviate from platforming becomes clear. You can make a great, varied game purely about 3D Platforming. Super Mario 64, Marble Blast Ultra, and Super Sami Roll are good examples. You can add more moves. You can make the levels more interesting and add powerups. You can lean into aspects such as momentum. The thing is, you can also make a great 3D Platformer that focuses on driving vehicles, or shooting, or hack n’ slash combat, or situational stories. You could probably even make a good 3D Platformer with a bunch of minigames. How you fill in the blanks is just much less obvious with 3D Platformers than most other genres. As such, it actually makes sense that this kind of stuff is normalized in 3D Platformers, at least to some extent.
The diversions do need to be good though, which is where Ty the Tasmanian Tiger goes wrong. None of the diversions could make a good game in isolation, and they don't make a good game when spliced together into a platformer. But what about the other constant elements? Well, they’re not great. The combat is fine, but not enough to make up for everything else. Most of the time you can just mash buttons to dispatch common enemies. There are other kinds of boomerangs one can use, but they’re mostly for ‘puzzles’ and stuff. The bosses aren’t great either. Generally, I think the biggest issue is that the player is expected to do things that haven’t been taught in any way. For example, the final boss requires one to use an ice boomerang on turrets and then bite them to defeat them. The thing is, this was never established as a mechanic before this one fight. Usually, the best bosses in games take advantage of pre-established mechanics framed in new ways, so it’s a shame Ty went in the opposite direction.
Another big element that brings the game down is just the general level layouts. As an example of a great level, let’s look at Mad Monster Mansion from Banjo-Kazooie. Yes, I’m comparing it to Banjo again. Now, this level is actually pretty small. You have a house, a thorny hedge maze, a bog, and a church as the main points of interest. The house has a basement and main room. The Church has an inner area that has a few things to do in it. The bog is admittedly pretty basic with not that much of interest. The thorny hedge maze basically separates each point of interest. That sounds fairly typical of a game, but once you transform into a pumpkin, not only does it allow you touch the thorny hedges which changes how you interact with the level, but it also unlocks more areas in the house. Mad Monster Mansion is small, but it’s also layered. Compare this to pretty much every level of Ty the Tasmanian Tiger. Most of the levels are… pretty big. Usually you can’t fast travel either, so you just have to slowly walk between areas of interest. Sometimes backtracking is very difficult as well. There’s no real layers to anything either. What you see is what you get. As such, exploration and collecting is usually underwhelming.
The stages also have the issue of a lack of variety. A lot of stage themes are reused at some point. I know this is all based on Australia, but still. Super Mario Sunshine stuck entirely to a tropical island theme, but it still had tons of variety. Australia has cities, right? I’m sure there’s some cool caves there too. Why not use stuff like that if you’re gonna stay faithful to the theming?
Alright, let’s discuss the story. Uh… I dunno, it’s fine. It’s about as cliché as an early 2000s 3D Platformer can get. It even has the edgy counterpart character who contributes pretty much nothing to the game. However, I do think there’s a fun level of self-awareness here that makes me like it a little more. The titular character isn’t as ‘’’’’’cool’’’’’’ as you’d think. He’s just a normal guy. Other characters make jokes and do action story cliches and he’ll just act confused or brush it off. He’s honestly an alright character, and I gotta admit, his design is alright too. He definitely has that Sonic appeal, although he’s definitely not as well designed.
I do think most of the other characters are pretty boring though. There’s this bird who gives you exposition and this koala that invents stuff, and at some point I had to wonder why they weren’t just combined into one singular character, because they’re not that well defined. The same goes for all the other characters, really. I mentioned the edgy counterpart Sly earlier, but his redemption is poorly developed. Shocking, I know.
Overall, not a good game. I hear that Ty 2 is better, so I might try that. Regardless, 4/10.
Oh, also: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDIA_X1iqsY
My brother being wrong about stuff isn’t uncommon (He tried to tell me Newton’s Third Law of Motion made no sense one time), but I think that just demonstrates the significance of the fact that even he was able to tell this game was nothing special. Honestly though, I knew that going in. I had seen enough of Ty the Tasmanian Tiger to know it would probably be derivative of those two games. I knew it would be ludicrous to expect even a 7/10 experience from it. I just wanted to play a decent 3D Platformer. But the problem lies therein: This game is hardly a 3D Platformer.
I talked about this briefly in my Spyro 2 review, but there’s a lot of 3D Platformers where Platforming takes a backseat to other elements. Most of this seemingly started with Banjo-Kazooie, which is the game that cemented the ‘Collectathon’ genre: Platformers where you must collect a lot of things. Banjo itself de-emphasized platforming a lot, but it was still there. Every level had one or two focal points that the player has to climb to get a Jiggy. The moveset doesn’t have the flow of a Mario game or the sort, but it is a platforming moveset. While I’m not huge on the minigames, they’re inoffensive at the end of the day. A lot of games copied the core structure of Banjo-Kazooie but missed elements like the aforementioned that made it good, such as Ty the Tasmanian Tiger.
How much platforming is actually in this game? Not much. Your moveset consists of a jump, glide, a homing attack, and throwing boomerangs. Level design doesn’t really enhance the platforming either; It’s all very basic platforms and obstacles, and the most interesting things get is hitting coconut trees with boomerangs to create platforms. That happens once in the game. There’s no sense of momentum either. The homing attack may sound cool, but all it amounts to is mashing a button in certain situations. The platforming is bare. I’m not exaggerating, God of War II has just as in-depth platforming as this game. I mean, it has a double jump and glide, so I don’t think what I’m saying is facetious. So what else is there in Ty the Tasmanian Tiger? Well, random busywork. Turret sections, killing random enemies, annoying escort missions, collecting random macguffins, etc.... The game does have the good idea of having race sections in every level, but even those are pretty dull overall.
One of the levels in this game has you riding this big bull thing. You can’t get off of it. You can’t jump while on the bull. Think about that. There’s an entire level in this game where you can’t jump. In a 3D Platformer. So… there’s like 72 Thunder Eggs in this game (Think Stars, Jiggys, Tickets, etc…). 8 of those are in this Outback level. Imagine you were playing Doom, with its 36 levels in total, and suddenly, midway through the game, you just can’t shoot any guns for four levels. Instead, you’re now engaging in sword combat for the next four levels. After these four levels, you never touch the sword again. That is the equivalent of this level in Ty the Tasmanian Tiger.
The thing is, even though I understand why so many games were made like this, I’m still confused about one thing: Why do people like games like this, or at least are fine with them? Let me be clear: I am happy if you enjoy this game. Getting upset because someone else enjoys something that isn’t hurting anybody is probably the dumbest thing a person can do. But… WHY?!?! What about it is fun? I’m sure that if the hypothetical Doom situation I concocted actually happened, people would be pissed, so why is it acceptable here? You could argue that people don’t love this game anyway, but even in beloved games like Crash 3, Spyro 2, and Sonic Adventure 2, these kinds of diversions are abundant, so why do people love those games? Why?
Well, I have a theory. Imagine, for a moment, you wanted to make a First-Person Shooter. What would you need, at minimum? Well, you’d need some movement options such as running. You’d need at least one gun. You’d need enemies to shoot. You’d need levels for all of this to take place in. Code all of that up and you have a very barebones FPS.
Let’s do this with a 3D Platformer. You need movement options, with the bare minimum probably being running and jumping. You need a level to do it in. And… That’s it. That is all you need to make a 3D Platformer. It won’t be good, but it will be a 3D Platformer.
I think that when you realize this, why so many 3D Platformers deviate from platforming becomes clear. You can make a great, varied game purely about 3D Platforming. Super Mario 64, Marble Blast Ultra, and Super Sami Roll are good examples. You can add more moves. You can make the levels more interesting and add powerups. You can lean into aspects such as momentum. The thing is, you can also make a great 3D Platformer that focuses on driving vehicles, or shooting, or hack n’ slash combat, or situational stories. You could probably even make a good 3D Platformer with a bunch of minigames. How you fill in the blanks is just much less obvious with 3D Platformers than most other genres. As such, it actually makes sense that this kind of stuff is normalized in 3D Platformers, at least to some extent.
The diversions do need to be good though, which is where Ty the Tasmanian Tiger goes wrong. None of the diversions could make a good game in isolation, and they don't make a good game when spliced together into a platformer. But what about the other constant elements? Well, they’re not great. The combat is fine, but not enough to make up for everything else. Most of the time you can just mash buttons to dispatch common enemies. There are other kinds of boomerangs one can use, but they’re mostly for ‘puzzles’ and stuff. The bosses aren’t great either. Generally, I think the biggest issue is that the player is expected to do things that haven’t been taught in any way. For example, the final boss requires one to use an ice boomerang on turrets and then bite them to defeat them. The thing is, this was never established as a mechanic before this one fight. Usually, the best bosses in games take advantage of pre-established mechanics framed in new ways, so it’s a shame Ty went in the opposite direction.
Another big element that brings the game down is just the general level layouts. As an example of a great level, let’s look at Mad Monster Mansion from Banjo-Kazooie. Yes, I’m comparing it to Banjo again. Now, this level is actually pretty small. You have a house, a thorny hedge maze, a bog, and a church as the main points of interest. The house has a basement and main room. The Church has an inner area that has a few things to do in it. The bog is admittedly pretty basic with not that much of interest. The thorny hedge maze basically separates each point of interest. That sounds fairly typical of a game, but once you transform into a pumpkin, not only does it allow you touch the thorny hedges which changes how you interact with the level, but it also unlocks more areas in the house. Mad Monster Mansion is small, but it’s also layered. Compare this to pretty much every level of Ty the Tasmanian Tiger. Most of the levels are… pretty big. Usually you can’t fast travel either, so you just have to slowly walk between areas of interest. Sometimes backtracking is very difficult as well. There’s no real layers to anything either. What you see is what you get. As such, exploration and collecting is usually underwhelming.
The stages also have the issue of a lack of variety. A lot of stage themes are reused at some point. I know this is all based on Australia, but still. Super Mario Sunshine stuck entirely to a tropical island theme, but it still had tons of variety. Australia has cities, right? I’m sure there’s some cool caves there too. Why not use stuff like that if you’re gonna stay faithful to the theming?
Alright, let’s discuss the story. Uh… I dunno, it’s fine. It’s about as cliché as an early 2000s 3D Platformer can get. It even has the edgy counterpart character who contributes pretty much nothing to the game. However, I do think there’s a fun level of self-awareness here that makes me like it a little more. The titular character isn’t as ‘’’’’’cool’’’’’’ as you’d think. He’s just a normal guy. Other characters make jokes and do action story cliches and he’ll just act confused or brush it off. He’s honestly an alright character, and I gotta admit, his design is alright too. He definitely has that Sonic appeal, although he’s definitely not as well designed.
I do think most of the other characters are pretty boring though. There’s this bird who gives you exposition and this koala that invents stuff, and at some point I had to wonder why they weren’t just combined into one singular character, because they’re not that well defined. The same goes for all the other characters, really. I mentioned the edgy counterpart Sly earlier, but his redemption is poorly developed. Shocking, I know.
Overall, not a good game. I hear that Ty 2 is better, so I might try that. Regardless, 4/10.
Oh, also: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDIA_X1iqsY
4 Comments
Also, for Sonic specifically, Adventure 1 was originally conceptualized as an RPG, which you can still see the bones of in the final game with the hub areas and major focus on story. And Sonic's beholden to the go-fast so there's the need to create those massively elaborate levels to facilitate the speed yet not let the whole game end in one sitting, so creating the other characters with their gimmicks was the solution to deepen the story and also give the designers a break with more standard stage construction. This is upped to the extreme when Unleashed dropped and the Day stages were such an insane technical challenge the slower parts in between were there to facilitate the length. It wasn't until last year's Sonic Frontiers we had a Sonic game actually make full on sandboxes for the character's speed.
For the other mascots with more measured pace in their movement, there's less of a technical excuse and it feels more around adding variety while side-stepping platform escalation and attempts to make the worlds more immersive and less abstract.
For the other mascots with more measured pace in their movement, there's less of a technical excuse and it feels more around adding variety while side-stepping platform escalation and attempts to make the worlds more immersive and less abstract.
@SunlitSonata Yeah, you definitely don't see commercials like that nowadays...
I've heard about the whole Sonic Adventure thing. I definitely think reusing stages but recontextualizing them with new characters was a good idea too, but they sometimes went a bit too far (Big stages, the car stages in SA2, etc...). Wouldn't mind to see something like that again though, especially if they stick to Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles, at least to start off with.
I get what you're saying when it comes to other Platformers, and it sometimes can work (I think A Hat in Time does it fairly well), but a lot of times it just pulls me out more. At some point in these collectathon types you just know that the characters are gonna ask you to do x so you can get y, which is such a videogame-esque story beat that it doesn't really enhance the world at all for me. Honestly, I'd like to see a 3D Platformer with really unique objectives for each stage instead of just "get to the end" or "collect stuff". I think Rayman 2 dabbled in this a little, but not that much. I also seem to remember Ratchet and Clank doing something like that, so maybe I should try and finally finish it.
I've heard about the whole Sonic Adventure thing. I definitely think reusing stages but recontextualizing them with new characters was a good idea too, but they sometimes went a bit too far (Big stages, the car stages in SA2, etc...). Wouldn't mind to see something like that again though, especially if they stick to Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles, at least to start off with.
I get what you're saying when it comes to other Platformers, and it sometimes can work (I think A Hat in Time does it fairly well), but a lot of times it just pulls me out more. At some point in these collectathon types you just know that the characters are gonna ask you to do x so you can get y, which is such a videogame-esque story beat that it doesn't really enhance the world at all for me. Honestly, I'd like to see a 3D Platformer with really unique objectives for each stage instead of just "get to the end" or "collect stuff". I think Rayman 2 dabbled in this a little, but not that much. I also seem to remember Ratchet and Clank doing something like that, so maybe I should try and finally finish it.
yeah I don't remember this game being good. I grew up with this game and not crash, go figure
SunlitSonata
8 months ago
Most memorable thing about this game in hindsight is the commercial where he put all the other scrimblo mascots in full body casts. Very much the last gasp of that 90s energy:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzsC1qSqFDo