TY the Tasmanian Tiger
TL;DR
It’s an amazing blast from-the-past from the PS2/Gamecube/Xbox era of 3D Platformers. Very charming, with solid (but easy) platforming, great music, and with some good graphical and camera improvements.
Positives:
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A classic brought back from the dead! This game is (considered by me and others) a classic from the PS2 era!
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It’s a solid platformer! Nice tight controls, nothing to horribly hard, and good level design!
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Quirky characters! From Shazza, to Maurie, to even Ty himself! They all have there own personality and, sometimes they are even funny! (Especially Maurie!) Boss Cass is a legendary villain in my eyes!
– Real player with 29.6 hrs in game
Read More: Best 3D Platformer Soundtrack Games.
Ty The Tasmanian Tiger is essentially a 3D platformer in the style of classics like Super mario 64, Banjo Kazooie, Crash Bandicoot and Croc, just to name a few. The game clearly takes inspiration of those and even wears some of the design decisions on its sleeve. Ofcourse there is absolutely nothing wrong with that when its done well.
And well they did!
Let’s look at the pros and cons!
Pros:
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Fun and varied gameplay
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Great and fitting soundtrack for each individual level
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Cute characters and simple story
– Real player with 19.9 hrs in game
Poi
I’ve been playing this game since the very, very early versions of the Early Access release, before cameras and costumes were a thing, but I’ve taken a long, long time to write a review, mostly because I’m having a hard time to fully express my feelings about this game. There are way too many things to talk about, which means this is going to be a rather lengthy review, and it might also be all over the place due to the amount of stuff that comes to mind, but let’s dive right in.
I’ve spent most of my teenage years and all of my early adulthood wishing for the “perfect” 3D platformer, one that combined most of the things I like in a single, awesome package. I dreamed of a game with a rich, vast world to explore. It had to have a lot of secrets and tricks to discover, but it also had to have well designed platforming and action to boot, and the atmosphere had to evoke feelings of childlike wonderment and adventurous endeavors in boththe soundtrack, the visuals and the story. The characters had to be adorable and stylish, and the gameplay had to be smooth and thrilling.
– Real player with 84.1 hrs in game
Read More: Best 3D Platformer Family Friendly Games.
Poi is a good Mario clone. End of story now get out of the review section and buy the game if you want to kill a good 32 hours collecting things.
okay that’s not entirely true so read this instead
PLOT
You and your sister run away from the city in order to find Adventure. On your adventure to find adventure you meet up with Mario in his mid 80’s who asks you to get his sonic ring with ribbons attached to it down from a tall stump due to him being a crotchety old man who can’t do it himself. So you jump to the top of the stump, grab his ring and when you bring it back to him he tells you that the ring is called an “Explorers Medallion” and they are foudn all over the world. So he asks you and your sister if you want to get on his magic flying whale blimp to find him and since choice matters as much as it did in TellTale’s Walking Dead Season 1 in this game, you say yes and off the three of you go to go get the Medallions and save the world or something
– Real player with 16.8 hrs in game
Yooka-Laylee
Yooka-Laylee notably became famous before it was even released, since it broke a crowdfunding record, and this accomplishment, due to context, was glorious on its own. This is common knowledge to many readers, but just in case, a recap: A bit over 20 years ago Rareware made a series called Banjo-Kazooie that became possibly the most beloved 3D platformers of all time. A third game was announced but due to Rare getting sold to Microsoft, delayed a while, and what people ended up getting was a fairly unrelated vehicle-building game with the Banjo license grafted on; worse still, it’s publicity and script constantly lambasted the original formula as outmoded. The game bombed, many staff left Rare, and this was already karmic, but then the rogues went on to twist the knife by forming Playtonic, launched a Kickstarter promising a new game that brought back the old BK style, and made nearly 2 million pounds in under an hour. As such a huge middle finger to those in Rare who betrayed old fans, Playtonic deserves great applause. By now, though, Kickstarter has become infamous for how making profits from appealing concepts alone allows developers to skimp on their execution, and though not without its good points, Yooka-Laylee continues that trend.
– Real player with 44.4 hrs in game
Read More: Best 3D Platformer Kickstarter Games.
Huge, empty worlds that are gorgeous and exciting to explore for the first time, but are painfully tedious to scour for the last few collectables?
Only 5 worlds and a hub, but they’re all unnecessarily massive?
A bunch of annoying physics puzzles, racing challenges, and timers?
Hidden bonus challenges that make you want to tear your hair out?
Wait a minute, this isn’t Banjo-Kazooie. This is Super Mario Sunshine!
Seriously, Yooka-Laylee makes more sense when you look at it as a successor to Sunshine, a game that got just about as much hate as it got love. Like Sunshine, I feel that Yooka-Laylee simultaneously deserves all the love it gets, but also all the hate it gets. I haven’t felt so perfectly ambivalent over a game in a very long time. I had a lot of fun with this game, hence the thumbs-up, but I can perfectly understand why some people don’t like it. If you had a love/hate relationship with Sunshine, you can probably expect to feel exactly the same about Yooka-Laylee.
– Real player with 38.5 hrs in game
Effie
This is again more of a neutral rating than a definite positive one. But let me get more into the details to explain.
Effie is a typical Unreal 3D-platformer made by a small team, and this shows, in both good and bad ways. On the positive side you can definitely see the dedication and work that was put into the environments of some levels (like the Vineyard or Windmills City), the platforming sequences are decent, too, and the many runes to collect give some good incentive to explore. Difficulty stays in a casual to easy range, yet doesn’t get too boring. Music was quite fitting as well, not too much variation, but also alright on the whole. So I have to admit I had fun regarding those aspects all in all. I didn’t mind the sometimes a bit clunky movements, or the narration style (a voiced narrator tells the game like a story to his grandchild). But the design and technical flaws sadly always pulled my experience down in between.
– Real player with 10.8 hrs in game
TL;DR at the end.
When you start the game, right off the bat, first thing I noticed is how unpolished the game is, the animations for opening chests for example seem half-assed, the combat basically consists of just mashing heavy attack and later on when you unlock the boomerang move (which for some reason is even stronger than the heavy attack while also being a huge AoE) and you spam that instead you have to watch that animation in slow-motion EVERY. SINGLE. TIME.
On the narrative side, the story is very basic but that’s not why I’m here for, and the voice acting is pretty lame and you’d keep hearing the same voice lines over and over again for example every time you open a blue chest you get one of two voice lines, and you open quite a lot of them.
– Real player with 8.0 hrs in game
Castle on the Coast
Fun game with great controls and fun levels.
I enjoyed it 8/10
– Real player with 7.8 hrs in game
An effective, charming 3D platform experience that is honestly one of the best on steam. I got to play this early thanks to the dev but in no way did that influence my opinion on it, it is genuinely a great experience you should check out for yourself.
8/10
– Real player with 7.6 hrs in game
Lorcan The Leprechaun
Lorcan The Leprechaun is Pure Classic 3D Platforming Bliss!
Great things come in small packages!
Lorcan might not be very tall, but he’s leaps and bounds above the rest! When the Pot of Gold is stolen from Clover Temple (where the end of every rainbow in the world resides) Lorcan The Leprechaun is needed to save the day! Run, Jump, Flip, Dive, Spin, And Frolic to various incredible locations all around the world to collect the mystical Golden Clovers and restore balance.
Incredible Level Variety!
Never get bored with a huge variety of unique levels that range from vast open world areas to explore, to tightly-knit linear challenges to overcome. Travel to far away lands and meet incredible characters and creatures from various folklore found around the world.
Tight Controls
Welcome back the Incredible tight and responsive controls seldom found in modern 3D Platformers. Beginners can enjoy the freedom of movement and achieve all of the necessary goals in order to progress, and more advanced players can find incredible depth in the gameplay mechanics and work endlessly to improve their accuracy and speed.
Misc. A Tiny Tale
Misc. A Tiny Tale is a celebration of classic style 3D Platformers. Experience a heartfelt adventure with Buddy and Bagboy, two tiny robots made from miscellaneous items. Hop through each chapter meeting a quirky cast of characters - all while collecting cogs and items to help bots around you.
KEY FEATURES:
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Classic style 3D Platforming fun.
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Stunning colorful visuals built from the ground up.
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Find and collect cogs to open up new chapters.
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Discover and help a wide cast of unique characters across your journey.
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Jump into underground platforming challenges to test your skills.
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Explore the world in adorable costumes found in each chapter.
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Spend your collected nuts at the “CanDo!” stores across each chapter.
Slime 64
Slime 64 is a 3D Collectathon Platformer inspired by the 64-bit era!
Play as four uniquely strong elemental Slimes in any order you’d like as they meet each other on their journey and combine their powers to save the world from the diabolical Wurl Tzun and his ever-expanding enterprise. The Geo Keys and Golden Bells will unlock new worlds to explore as you amass your strength in numbers (and your pile of goodies).
Meet the Slimes!
Fly through the air with Winona, zip through water at high speed with Marsh, dash and jump farther and higher with Ash, and build up insane speed rolling around as Tuff. These four slimes hail from all around the world, but through their adventures will meet and fuse, allowing their powers to be used at the same time!
Choose a Visual Style
Some people prefer jaggy edges and scanlines, others prefer crystal clear sight. Play the game with Nostalgia Goggles set to On, HD Remaster, or Blinding!
Adaptive Soundtrack
Catchy tunes inspired by the style and tone of yesteryear combined with some smart programming help capture that classic exploration feel.
All sorts of challenges!
Do you like platforming? How about puzzle solving? Speedrunning? As fans of all of the above, we’re pushing Slime 64 to be the best it can be, and to offer something for everyone.
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Starshot: Space Circus Fever
This may be the best way to play Starshot: Space Circus Fever today.
It’s relatively sad, because, as it’s been said, it is a bad port.
This being said, all of the issues can be overcome, and you can have an enjoyable experience with a few precautions.
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TECHNICAL ISSUES
…obviously we’ll have to live with these homemade “fixes”, I have no hope these devs will ever take a second look at the game.
First of all, the FRAMERATE. The game becomes completely unplayable at some points in the first level. You have to exit the game and restart, you get 1 frame per second or something. I solved this problem running the game in compatibility mode for Windows XP - Service Pack 3. After I did this, my save file got deleted (?), but then I completed the game with ZERO FRAMERATE ISSUES, FROM BEGINNING TO END.
– Real player with 13.1 hrs in game
Personally I enjoyed the game for the nostalgia. One of the first games i ever played on computer. Starshot is a super old game, and therefore plays like it. Broken camera angles, messy controls and getting stuck on more than a fair share of objects. However I got lucky with it playing just fine on windows 10. I honestly thought I would encounter more bugs running it.
– Real player with 7.8 hrs in game
Island Raft Survival 2021: Ocean Escape
annoying bird in the beginning of game, I’ve played much better games similar to this one.
– Real player with 4.8 hrs in game
It’s a super fun game, but its not letting me repair my raft
– Real player with 2.9 hrs in game