Toki Tori 2+ (NSW) Review

How many reviews can SuperPhillip Central pack into the final week of March? Let's find out! Our first review of the week is a recent release on the Nintendo eShop for the Nintendo Switch, Two Tribes's Toki Tori 2+. Should you chirp happily about the game or derp sadly for Two Tribes?

Bird is the word.

Toki Tori 2+ feels like a 2D side-scrolling puzzle-platformer with levels that command you to go in one specific direction with very little in the way of choice in how you want to do things. In your first hours with Toki Tori 2+, you might figure that the game has one path in mind of where you're supposed to go. I mean, how am I supposed to get past THIS obstacle!? I don't have the right ability However, as you progress through the game, you quickly realize that these thoughts of limitation are, in fact, in no way, shape or form truthful. The roadblocks you encounter in Toki Tori 2+ are merely those of illusion.

You see, something that Toki Tori 2+ veterans know going into the game that beginners do not is that you can pretty much go anywhere you want in Toki Tori 2+ right from the get-go. There's no obstruction or obstacle you can't get past or figure out away through or around. Unlike a Metroidvania game, you don't get access to new abilities to reach new areas of Toki Tori 2+. Instead, you already have access to all of the abilities within the game; it's just that you don't know how to use them immediately as a beginner. 

Starting off, our heroic, chirpy friend can only whistle, stomp, and move. That's pretty much all you get throughout the entire duration of the game ability-wise. It's up to you to figure out how to use these in isolation or in combination with other creatures, obstacles, and pieces of environment in order to progress in Toki Tori's adventure. 

Toki Tori 2+ is one amazing puzzle-platforming adventure.

Toki Tori 2+ is an ingenious display of having a tutorial that shows and doesn't tell players straight out on how to proceed. Hints in the environment and context clues provide what's necessary to learn how to interact with the game world and move forward. One of the earliest examples of this is being impeded by a big, stone block, which is the home of a hermit crab. Seeing as Toki Tori can't jump in the game, some other solution is needed. That's when the two aforementioned actions come in: whistling and stomping. Standing next to the hermit crab and whistling doesn't seem to do anything, so the logical next step would be to stomp. In doing so, the crab and its block move to the right, no longer impeding your way ahead. One can even experiment with the hermit crab and its stone block further by whistling while standing on the other side. The hermit crab will move towards Toki Tori. This shows the player that when they whistle and move, the hermit crab will move towards them, and when they stomp and move, the hermit crab will move away from them.

Stomping while on this side of this hermit crab will cause it to move away from Toki Tori,
building a staircase for him to climb across and proceed through this level.

This type of experimenting is key to learning how to progress in Toki Tori 2+ because, again, the game doesn't blatantly let loose what you need to do in text or spoken form. It's all on you to teach yourself on how to get through levels while solving the game's puzzles. Toki Tori 2+ lets you learn how to use your abilities in simple scenarios before eventually pitting you against puzzles that really have some involved steps to complete. Once you learn how certain abilities interact with the game world, you can go back to previous areas and reach all-new spots that you couldn't figure out to enter before. That said, if you're already familiar with how Toki Tori's basic move set interacts with the game world, you can essentially reach these areas and go anywhere you want. There is no one correct way to play Toki Tori 2+. There is no one correct path through the game. It's an interconnected game world where your knowledge on how Toki Tori's behavior influences the world around him means you can start at as easy a series of levels or as challenging as you want. 

One of my favorite-looking locales in Toki Tori 2+. Just so soothing and calming to gaze upon. 

The levels of Toki Tori 2+ span a great number of locales. Though levels have no names, you can easily tell them apart by their distinct backgrounds and environments. Such locales include a sunny beach, a hot and intense volcano, a forest filled with running windmills, a central town for the local chirping residents, cascading waterfalls that spray enough mist in the air to show off gorgeous rainbows, heavily wooded areas, and even the underside of the island itself. The island map, which is pretty sizable, tells you where you currently are, and this pops up as you move between levels. You can also call it at any time in the game by hitting the "-" button. 

This is but one half of the island map of Toki Tori 2+.

Eventually, you learn various songs played by Toki Tori as he whistles. You merely press the whistle button for a short note or hold the button for a long note. You can do a 4-6 note melody to perform a handful of songs. Some call upon a bird holding a camera to take photos of nearby creatures and obstacles. Others can call upon an eagle to pick up up and transport you to any warp point you've already found throughout he island. 

Then, there's a song that helps out if you manage to botch a puzzle, which is anything but rare in Toki Tori 2+. Levels contain an ample amount of checkpoints, usually placed before and after a puzzle. Playing one of the songs as Toki Tori transports him to the last checkpoint he reached, setting everything back as it was to the time he touched the checkpoint. This can easily rectify a costly mistake in a puzzle that would otherwise force you to completely reset the level and start from its beginning. That said, this isn't perfect. Some puzzles have two checkpoints involved, and if you find yourself butchering a puzzle and creating a no-win situation (a common occurrence in Toki Tori 2+) and then hit another checkpoint, your progress will be saved. This means that if you play the song to return to a checkpoint, the puzzle will still be unwinnable and you'll have to reset the level. 

Are you yawning because you haven't moved in quite a while,
or are you crying because we're going to have to reset the level?

It would be better if the game had a "reset the puzzle" option instead of resetting the entire level, as it's quite easy to innocently mess up a puzzle and not want to have to redo minutes of hard work all over again because you accidentally hit a checkpoint. A Switch-exclusive song does mitigate this issue somewhat, allowing you to put down your own temporary checkpoint, but it doesn't really fix the problem here.

It's like a scene out of Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds!

Another song is a blessing for the endgame, a song that reveals if you're missing any collectibles, aka golden feathers, in a given level. In levels, this shows up as a ring, pointing in the general direction where the golden feathers hover. On the island map, the song reveals which levels still contain golden feathers, so you don't have to revisit every level in the game and individually play the song from one location to another. Golden feathers have a special bonus at the end of the game for diligent and persistent players, and the reward is well worth it.

Toki Tori is just trying to help this lava go with the flow.

Speaking of the endgame, Toki Tori 2+ will definitely give you your money's worth. It's a game that took me close to 15 hours to reach what is essentially the end of the game. A whole slew of in-game achievements encourage even more playing, and one even welcomes the idea of completely sequence breaking the game. That's just how open the game world and rules of Toki Tori 2+ are. Just be prepared to have access to a guide, preferably a YouTube walkthrough, just in case you find yourself getting frustrated at not being able to wrap your head around a particular puzzle (or especially the timing necessary to solve a particular puzzle). 

Toki Tori 2+ is a brilliant puzzle-platformer that is so much smarter than it initially appears to be. The game world is only as limited for you to explore as your experimentation with it and the knowledge of how to use the game's mechanics. Being able to slowly and safely learn the tricks you need to utilize with only a two-ability system becomes a mighty revelation when you figure out you've always had the option to plot your own course across the island. It makes subsequent runs through the game and potentially speed-run opportunities all the more special. The lack of a "reset puzzle" feature and some truly antagonizing puzzles can cause some mild annoyance with this game, but overall, Toki Tori 2+ shows that going to the birds isn't always a bad thing!

[SPC Says: A-]

Review copy provided by Two Tribes.

RIVE: Ultimate Edition (NSW) Review

Time to bring the heat at the start of winter with a RIVE: Ultimate Edition review for the Nintendo Switch. Blast off and blast those robotic pests to smithereens!

Arrive, survive -- Do it all with RIVE.

It's always fascinating when a developer shakes up a popular or classic genre of video game and adds its own spin to it. That's what Two Tribes gives players with RIVE: Ultimate Edition. However, the way the developer innovates is by shaking up two individual game genres, both classics: the platformer and the shoot-em-up. The end result is a 12 mission game that is just as hard to beat as it is to resist.

RIVE has you playing as a rough and gruff pilot of a ship (with the same name as the title of the game -- just without "Ultimate Edition" included, for you cheeky jokers out there) investigating a derelict space station at the edge of the galaxy. All of the dialog within RIVE is voiced, and the pilot and the robotic A.I. that routinely follows him throughout the facility both deliver fine performances with some witty and humorous lines.

As I said in the introduction, RIVE is part platformer and part shoot-em-up. Platforming segments occur in gravity-centric areas of the game, deep inside the station with several examples (such as no-gravity zones). Platforming is performed with the left shoulder button, allowing for a double jump as well. Meanwhile, you're required to do some swift dodging and evading as enemies oftentimes swarm on top of you. Thankfully, you have firepower yourself in the form of a cannon that shoots out lasers and sub-weapons that require ammo to use.

A different kind of space odyssey.

The fluidity of changing play styles is incredible in RIVE: Ultimate Edition. At one moment you'll be using one stick to move and the other to aim at targets, all the while leaping from platform to platform and avoiding enemy fire, while the next you'll seamlessly switch to flying in a zero-gravity sector, such as space, in auto-scrolling segments reminiscent of the 8-bit, and 16-bit arcade classics. Occasionally you'll even be forced to face in one direction in true classic shoot-em-up style while others have a more modern approach with 360 degree aiming and movement.

Rather than use a typical shoot-em-up sub-weapon system of collecting items to equip a power-up and then losing it when you die, you instead purchase sub-weapons (along with added armor and the ability to attract goodies like loot and ammo from afar) from a post-mission shop that uses space junk collected from fallen foes as its currency.

The sub-weapons come in four varieties, can be switched between with a press of the correct direction on the face buttons, and each has its own intended place to be utilized. For instance, the Shotgun is perfect for lining up an antagonizing group of enemies in a narrow, enclosed hallway and blowing them all to smithereens with one powerful blast. Whereas if you're in a less claustrophobic locale, such as a wide open area with plenty of room to it, Homing Missiles may be just what the doctor of destruction ordered. Again, sub-weapons require ammo, so you can't just mash on the sub-weapon button to continually use it over and over again. Each sub-weapon has a charge time before it can be used again, so it's imperative to use them in high stakes conflicts with enemies.

So much for "335 days since our last workplace accident", huh?

Outside of traditional weapons and sub-weapons, later in the game, your ship acquires the ability to hack into other drones. This grants you a teammate, so to speak, albeit a bit of a fragile one, to battle alongside you. It can take to your defense while dishing out damage to other enemies. A lot of the time it's merely great as a distraction for other enemies while you take the opportunity to go to town on them. Never take your eyes off the opponent, grasshoppers!

One of the biggest downsides with RIVE: Ultimate Edition comes from something to do with my own (and most likely many other players') skill level and not really the fault of the game itself. For me, RIVE was brutally difficult. One's health and armor gets taken out rather fast in even the easiest of difficulties (Normal, whereas Hard mode is far more challenging but boosts your score for the game's online leaderboards). I wish there was a slightly easier difficulty that would deliver less damage to my ship whenever I got hit. In exchange for that, this easier difficulty would disqualify you from being on the leaderboards. It'd be a nice trade-off this way so lesser skilled players would be able to practice particularly unforgiving missions.

Blades, lasers, and foes are all ready to kill you. Can you survive?

What further annoys with RIVE is that upon taking damage, the screen gets a red gradient around the edges of the screen. As more and more damage is taken and one's health is lowered to critical levels, it makes things hard to see. Simply put, when you're close to death, countless enemies are swarming to your location, and you can't make them out or know where to aim, it gets a bit frustrating to die because the developers didn't come up with a better way of displaying critical health without partially obstructing your view. It merely makes a hard game even harder.

These grievances said, the checkpoint system is mostly well thought out, so repeating significantly sizable segments of missions seldom ever occurs. This smart placement of the majority of checkpoints ensures that players won't get overly irritated over constant deaths (and you will die constantly at first). Furthermore, the brisk loading times between your vehicle exploding and placing you back to your last checkpoint, make retries of mission segments nowhere near as agonizing as they could have been.

That may look like a disco ball, but it's actually a zero-gravity zone.
...It also sparkles when disco music plays.

While RIVE: Ultimate Edition isn't recommended for players who don't like games with high difficulties, for veteran fans of either platformers or shoot-em-ups, the Nintendo Switch iteration of RIVE offers some truly tricky, action-packed missions that most will want to play through on Normal difficulty (which is already a massive challenge) and on Hard, which is perfect for high-score types. Competing on a global online leaderboard, comparing scores with folks on your Switch friends list, and even partaking in the one-credit-only run-through of all 12 missions (the latter being the most daring) add even more replay value to this capable dual genre package. All this and the ability to come up with combinations of cuss words you've never heard of can be yours with RIVE: Ultimate Edition.

[SPC Says: B-] 

Review copy provided by Two Tribes.