Game Reviews

Toki Tori (Virtual Console)

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Toki Tori (Virtual Console)
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3DS
| Toki Tori

The period immediately before a video game sequel is due to come out is always a good time to flog past releases in the series, as players look to catch up before embarking on the latest quest.

Toki Tori 2, coming later this year for Wii U and PC, is hoping to revive a series that first began life on Game Boy Color in 2001.

The recent Toki Tori remake on Android didn't exactly spark great excitement in Pocket Gamer Towers. As you'd expect, everything that the remake suffers from is also in the original. While it was a lovely puzzler at the time, nowadays the mechanics are feeling a little worse for wear.

Tik Tok

Toki Tori's unhatched brothers and sisters have all been kidnapped and scattered around the world. Over a series of 50+ levels, he needs to gather them all up while keeping clear of the various obstacles and nasty creatures in his way.

Toki's movement is very limited. He can climb up slight steps, but not up larger ledges. He can also fall quite a way, and climb up ladders. By planning his route, it's possible to pick the perfect path and grab all the eggs with minutes to spare.

Not every egg is accessible from the get-go, however. It's necessary to use power-ups that Toki gains throughout the game, such as the ability to build bridges, warp through solid walls, and zap enemies with ice.

There's some very clever level design throughout, and you'll also have to use your power-ups to their fullest. Fortunately, it's possible to look around the level before you begin, so you can plan your route.

Out of time

The game suffers from numerous off-putting mechanics that you simply wouldn't see in today's video games - at least, not in the good ones.

The controls are incredibly clunky, with Toki's movement never truly feeling right. The fact that switching power-ups requires you press the awkward 'select' button - a button rarely used for anything other than secondary abilities in other games - shows that the control scheme isn't exactly slick.

What the puzzler could have really done with is the rewind mechanic found in Game Boy classic Catrap, as it's truly annoying when you get stuck in a puzzle and have to start all over again.

Toki Tori is also pretty dull to look at, even by the standards of a 2001 Game Boy title, with tiled environments that all begin to look exactly the same after just 20 or so minutes of play.

Whether Toki Tori 2 will be much cop is all down to developer Two Tribes. If the team can iron out the issues and really bring the core concept into the foreground, then it may well create a legacy worth remembering.

Toki Tori (Virtual Console)

Toki Tori is a classic that hasn't aged all that well, with clunky controls and dull visuals
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.