Review: Toki Tori
by Matt Fox
May 27, 2009
Overview
Take control of Toki Tori, a cute little...baby chicken? At least I think that's what it's suppose to be. I'll be honest, I've never heard of or played this game until now. It's cute and entertaining, but is it worth the price of admission? If you like casual and challenging platformer games that are, well...cute...then I say yes. Because this game does just about everything right. And really, what more could you ask for?Features
A lot, actually...where to even start? How about the the amount of levels that you can play? Try 80 different levels that are spread over four large worlds! Yup, you heard me right. This game has a ridiculous amount of levels in it.
They also arm you with all kinds of different items to help you along the way like the Telewarp (which warps you from one section of the game to the other), InstantRock (self explanatory I think), and the Slug Sucker (I don't want to spoil this one, but trust me when I say it's awesome).
Breakdown
The Good:
Well...just about everything. Again, this is my first time being introduced to this game. Never played it on Gameboy or the Wii so this is all I have to go off of and it didn't disappoint.
The graphics are very impressive as is the gameplay and the amount of content included with the game. This is definitely worth the price for sure. The controls for this game are also top notch and extremely innovative for this type of game.
With a game like this you expect to control every aspect of the character like jumping, moving, climbing, etc. However, in this you just tap where you want Toki to go and it goes there. At first I was a little annoyed by this, but as I got more into the game I realized that this is the perfect way to do a platformer like this.
The iPhone is known for it's clunky controls, right? Lord knows I have had many issues with the Virtual Keyboard that the iPhone has implemented. Click here for my column on Virtual Keyboards by the way.
What the devs have done here is taken that control scheme and thrown it right out the window. Screw the bad controls! We've got something better and you know what? I works amazingly well. I loved that I could just touch the screen and the character would go there. The items you have really are the core of the game and it takes a lot of strategy to get the levels completed once you get further along in it.
I also love the Wildcard feature here. This is basically a free pass on any level that is giving you trouble...awesome! These games can always get frustrating when you get to that level that you just cannot get past. Use the Wildcard and it just skips you to the next level. You can only use it once and if you want to get it back, you must go back and complete said level that you skipped. Just a great feature here.
The Bad:
I really couldn't find anything wrong with this game. It has only one music track...how about that? However, you can turn if off so...what else? Honestly, you either like these type of game or you don't...period. If you like it, the game is great. If not, then you won't.
