Following on from the success of Toki Tori, the second game
in the series is now available with a large update which fixes a number of bugs
and other glitches. There is a plot of sorts but it’s left to the player to decipher.
From what we can make out you must try and get your little yellow bird to meet
up with his friends during some strange catastrophe which is afflicting the
land where they live.
Toki Tori 2 is a brave departure from the first game in the
series. Now there are no items to collect in order to solve puzzles and everything
is dealt with via skills dished out during the game. That said, your basic
skill set won’t evolve much from start to finish. Toki Tori has a whistle or
tweet he can use and a ground stomp. These skills are generally used to move
animals closer to you or further away from you. Players must think how to best
use these skills within their environment in order to progress.
Whistling certain tunes also activate various skills but
these don’t really affect the level based puzzles. Most of the time these
amount to checking where you are on a map or returning to the last save point
and resetting the puzzle. That isn’t to say that there is no variety. As you
progress the two basic skills are utilised in a number of different ways.
Sometimes the whistle is needed to get fire flies to follow you in order to
illuminate dangerous paths, while at others it’s to get bubble blowing frogs to
face the right way. The stomp also has different functions. Stomping in water
for instance will send splashes out to short circuit electric bugs, while at
other times it can be used to break floors or knock creatures off the ceiling.
There is certainly an inventive and playful use of the two
core skills and it’s commendable that the team had the faith to build a game
around them without feeling the need to continually add something else into the
mix. While the game is certainly fairly sedately paced we certainly didn’t feel
that puzzles were becoming repetitive and often found short goes turning into
much longer sessions as we tried to push on to the next checkpoint.
There’s also a camera that can be used via the Wii U
controller to take pictures of the various creatures in the game world. These
then go into an album and collecting them all gives the player a reward. It’s a
nice distraction but we rarely found ourselves drawn to it instead of the
proper puzzling.
One of the biggest problems of the game is the lack of
direction. There’s no real plot as such but where it can become frustrating is
the lack of guidance given early on. Very little is explained to the player and
while large parts of the game are common sense and easily identified via trial and
error, we can see players getting stuck at points and having absolutely no idea
what to do. That said there is certainly a charming game here and there isn’t
really anything else like I around at the moment. It reminds us of a long lost
Amiga puzzle platformer (which is a good thing).
Overall, Toki Tori 2+ offers a fun and colourful experience.
It won’t be to everyone’s taste but if you are looking for something to test
your brain against at a leisurely pace then this could well be the one for you.
It was a brave move to head away from the formula of the first game and for the
most part is works. It does take a little getting used to but once the game
clicks it’s an enjoyable adventure that’s well worth a look.
Overall 7/10
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