Tornado is one of those titles that begs to be played in order to determine its overall worth as a DS game. The shinycasing resembles the likeness of a Nintendo title and the cute animal charactersalso follow suit in providing this appearance. However, is the external shell areflection of its inner beauty or just a mere illusion to hide a not sobeautiful videogame? After all, it is what’s on the inside that counts themost, right?
Taking the Gameplay for a Spin
Tornado begins with a brief rundown of the story: A sinister person has decided to use black holes to suck up everything on earth. In order to thwart these plans and save the planet, a small band of Cosmic Cleaners must use their ability to transform into tornados to steal back all of the items that were taken from earth (everything from people to buildings to tanks). Though the game’s presentation does try to pull off the story pretty well, its overall silliness is too much to take in. And, as we have been accustomed to accept over the years, games oriented around strong, addictive gameplay need not spend a lot of time focusing on the story aspects of the game (case and point, any Mario game).
Amidst the storytelling, the first noticeably annoying part of the game comes into view: the cut scenes involve small bouts of text between the characters, with annoying bleeps for the voices that rivals the noises from Animal Crossing titles (but does it in a much more annoying demeanor). And despite this annoyance, there is still something else in these cut scenes that hurts the overall presentation and flow of the game: More importantly (or annoyingly) is the bulkiness of the text scrolling. Not only does it scroll slowly but unless you want to skip the cut scenes entirely, there is no other option to give you the ability to speed up the dialogue (you can tap the screen to do this but there are still extremely long pauses between different portions of the dialogue). Thus, if you care to keep up with the story at all, you’ll have to bear with these extremely bulky dialogue sequences.
Presentation problems aside, though, once the gameplay begins, players assume the role of Toki as he attempts to find his friends and determine how to counteract the effects of the black holes. Turns out, his ability to turn into a tornado is an invaluable asset in gaining back the stolen objects of planet earth. You form a tornado by spinning the stylus in circles on the touch screen. Once a tornado is formed, you can move around by tapping any direction on the touch screen (or by using the D-Pad). As you suck up items, you’ll be able to increase the size of your tornado (up to 5 levels) and each tornado size affects the total size of items you can suck up (it seems more and more DS games are following similar gameplay molds to Katamari Damaci as another recently reviewed title, Prey the Stars, also featured a growth format similar to this one).
There are ten unique levels in all, each with its own plethora of region specific items to transport using your tornado. In France you can move the Eiffel Tower, in Iraq you can pick up tanks, and in the United Kingdom, you can sweep up Big Ben. And though the gameplay is quite simplistic, I must admit that the concept is quite enjoyable (much in the same way that Katamari Damaci is). To help add functionality to the simplistic gameplay, there are a few moves you can attain throughout your adventure as well but these seemed more of gimmicks than actual help in sweeping up objects (a few actually contributed to the missions but ones such as blowing into the microphone to dash were a little quirky and not helpful in the slightest).
As you move through levels, you’ll also be able to look back at all of the items you’ve sucked up along the way. This is a tribute to completionists as it creates a reason to play through levels a few more times (though there really isn’t anything you attain from getting 100% completion aside from a few new songs to play during gameplay and pure satisfaction). And though the gameplay is mainly based around massive removal of structures and objects, each level has a specific mission and conditions. Each condition is a little different from the last, but in reality they’re generally nothing more than fetch quests (either finding a specific person or finding a certain amount of items on the map). A particularly annoying type of quest on a couple of different levels involved finding a tiny person throughout the entire map. What was annoying about this quest was that they were generally very small and difficult to find and see, so you could sweep through the map a few times and still not find them amongst the wreckage.
Natural (gaming) Disasters
So all of this gameplay sounds great and with 6 different characters, each with different overall stats, the gameplay seems quite enjoyable for the most part, right? Well, there is one huge flaw with the game’s format: From story mode missions to arcade missions to even multiplayer competitions, the game has an incessant need to restrict you with a time limit. At first I liked this aspect of the game because it reminded me a little bit of Blast Corps and its balls-hard missions, most of which were timed. However, after only a few levels of playtime with Tornado, I realized that this time limit severely encumbered the overall gameplay and made missions seem more taxing than fun.
Sure, Blast Corps missions were fun because they were so darn difficult but the difference is thatBlast Corps missions were extremely varied from level to level. In one instance (in Blast Corps) you were destroying buildings with a truck or giant robot while the next you’re racing cars on Mars or collecting items in a Pac-Man-esque style of level. In Tornado, the missions are all far too similar in task, lacking the ability to provide a highly varied and refreshing experience. Differences included small diversions here or there, such as a mistaken super hero who attacks you thinking you’re the cause of the black holes, but these were more of a nuisance than interesting gameplay additions(making the levels far too difficult in an unfair way).
Another issue with the gameplay/presentation is the course of events that occur once you lose. Contrary to the evolved format of most modern games, you are not brought to a menu screen where you can choose to replay the level or go back to the mode select screen. Instead, the game plays more like an arcade where losing brings you all the way back to the title screen. Thus, it takes another 30 seconds or so just to get back to the mode select screen, severely disrupting the overall flow of the game. By the time you lose several times on the same level (and believe me, you will), the disrupting skip back to the title screen does anything but make you want to continue playing. Many times I found myself holding back from obscenities after losing on a few of the levels (especially the one with that darned Super Hero!) and the hike all the way back to the title screen was just insult to injury.
There are other modes of play to be had in the game, but Arcade mode is really nothing more than replaying the levels you’ve already finished/unlocked to transport the items you couldn’t get to and/or to try for high scores. Again, you’re timed in this mode, so it doesn’t really feel any different than the actual story mode. Multiplayer doesn’t suffer as badly from the time limit issues, as multiplayer is always enjoyable under these rules. Having some of the more varied ideas for competitions in the game such as flagging more crystals than your opponent or eating more sushi, multiplayer can actually be pretty fun at times. However, I would have liked to see some non time-based battles such as attempting to flag a certain amount of crystals before your opponent or reaching a limit number of items before your opponent. Also, multiplayer is only via multi-pack, with no single pack multiplayer to be had.
Presentation
As for graphics, the in-game visuals are fairly impressive. Though the environments aren’t the most beautiful we’ve seen on the DS with pop-in and all, the game is still entirely in 3-D. For the most part, the frame rate remains high throughout the missions but at times when there are a lot of items on the screen or other objects (such as that cursed Super Hero), the game’s frame rate may drop dramatically. Still, I was fairly impressed with the in-game graphics overall. The cut scenes, on the other hand, are anything but flashy and the cartoon/animal characters aren’t the best concept art we’ve seen.
The music is pretty catchy also, featuring some up-beat songs that rarely get old throughout the gaming experience. The game also gives you the ability to collect new songs throughout the adventure and change the track at any time during gameplay by pressing the L or R button. Sound effects, on the other hand, are a mixed bag of tricks. For one, there are some great sounding effects that are very fitting for the game. However, there are equally as many annoying/bad sound effects to pierce your ears such as the aforementioned voices during cut scenes. These high pitched bleeps and bloops could induce a headache if not treated properly (turning the DS sound down during cut scenes).
I very much enjoyed the concept of this game and for the first couple of levels, the game was a fairly satisfying experience overall. However, as the game played on, I quickly lost interest due to the repetition of the quests as well as the overall difficulty due to the time limit. In fact, if I couldn’t beat a level after a few tries, I had little motivation to attempt the level again (nonetheless, I still proceeded just to play more of the game for this review).
The good news is that this game is very reasonably priced. With an MSRP of only $19.99, this game is on the lowest end of the DS game pricing. Thus, if you’re fine with dropping 20 bucks at your local game store, you could purchase this game new for that amount. If you purchase the game, you will receive a unique experience with a decent amount of theoretical depth (potential play time) but unless you’re in for a repetitious razing by the game’s ruthless time limit, your desire to continue playing the game may reduce radically and rapidly.
The Aftermath
Tornado is a very nice attempt at a unique, enriching experience on the DS. Using a fairly unique format of gameplay as well as original characters, catchy music, nice looking graphics, and decent multiplayer, the game succeeds greatly with its polish. However, its strengths are more than balanced out by its weaknesses, including a lack of gameplay progression and punishing time limits that make missions needlessly difficult (and not in a good way). At $19.99, this game is priced as one of the cheaper game’s on the DS so despite its inequities, it still might be a consideration for a purchase.