Tokyo Crash Mobs
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3DS
| Tokyo Crash Mobs

We British are pretty amazing at queueing. Whether it's at the bank, the post office, or to get into a club on a Friday night, we can always get behind a good queue.

According to Tokyo Crash Mobs, the Japanese aren't so much into forming an orderly line. In fact, they like to cut the queue down to size by throwing people around.

This is the weirdest game on 3DS by a long shot. This wacky take on match-three title Zuma may be technically simple, but there's plenty to like here.

Queueing is for suckers

Your protagonists don't particularly enjoy being at the back of the pack - so much so that they're willing to chuck human beings at other human beings in order to push through the crowd.

Aiming with your stylus, you need to lob people dressed in bright colours so that they land in the queue next to similarly dressed people. Match three and they go pop.

There are several variations on this theme, but this is the core idea - and it would perhaps be a little dull, were it not for the surreal limb that Tokyo Crash Mobs goes out on.

From the videos involving girls falling through clouds to the strange men all running at the screen, nothing about Tokyo Crash Mobs is normal. Put it this way: in my review notes, the first bullet-point I made reads simply, "what?"

It's that sort of strangeness that makes you want to keep playing, just to see what happens next. Most of the videos make no sense whatsoever, but it honestly doesn't matter - it's just beautifully insane.

Crash time

Tokyo Crash Mobs isn't completely a one-trick pony, as there's a good deal of variety in these match-three bones.

From using the gyroscope to aim at ninjas to rolling bodies under the queue as it jumps, a lot of thought has been put into the gameplay.

But it soon becomes obvious that this is a Zuma game and not a huge amount else. You'll stay for the wackiness, but not the gameplay.

Whether you ought to pick up Tokyo Crash Mobs comes down to whether you want to see how well a tired genre can be revamped simply by throwing a bit of silliness in.

If silliness is your thing, this is a game that deserves your attention.

Tokyo Crash Mobs

Tokyo Crash Mobs takes the crown as the Nintendo 3DS's weirdest game yet, with potentially dull match-three action that is rejuvenated by silliness
Score
Mike Rose
Mike Rose
An expert in the indie games scene, Mike comes to Pocket Gamer as our handheld gaming correspondent. He is the author of 250 Indie Games You Must Play.