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Tearaway Review

Graphics:
8.8
Gameplay:
9.3
Sound:
9.1
Control:
8.6
Replay Value:
9.0
Overall Rating:
9.0
Online Gameplay:
Not Rated
Publisher:
SCEA
Developer:
Media Molecule
Number Of Players:
1-2
Genre:
Action/Adventure
Release Date:
November 22, 2013


Leave it up to Media Molecule to deliver quite possibly the best PlayStation Vita game to date. It ranks right up there with the likes of Uncharted: Golden Abyss , Rayman Origins and Gravity Rush , and those who enjoyed the LittleBigPlanet titles will especially appreciate Tearaway . Loaded with charming creativity, plenty of fantastic gameplay and design elements, and technologically slick integration between the real world and the paper world, this is a joy to experience. When’s the last time you spent the majority of a play session smiling?

Graphically, Tearaway excels not in the conventional areas such as photorealistic visual quality, immense clarity and a gazillion pixels infused into each minute detail. In fact, it’s the imagination of the designers that elevates the graphics to an impressive level. It’s the lively, dynamic environment filled with budding flowers, rolling and unrolling strips of colored paper, cutesy animals of all types, and the world design in general. Everything gels into a wildly immersive, amazingly inventive landscape. Not easy to do when everything must be comprised of paper!

The sound is another high watermark for this production, and the quality once again stems from the overall atmosphere. There are a couple excellent narrators who help tell the story, and the soundtrack is wonderfully orchestrated and implemented. The characters within the gameplay only utter those odd grunts so familiar to LBP fans but again, it’s just something else that makes you grin. The fantastic score complements a set of effects that accomplish two critical things: 1. You’re always reminded that you are in a world of paper, and 2. You’re always reminded that this game hinges upon its super high fun factor. The effects, score and voices all contribute to the wonderfully original style that simply cannot be ignored.

Let me begin my analysis of the gameplay be saying— Tearaway makes the best use of the Vita’s unique functions of any title yet. I have never been a proponent of touch anything (touchpad, touchscreen, whatever), primarily because of the simple fact that no touchscreen will ever – repeat: ever – be as perfectly responsive in terms of control as the simple press of a button. That’s 100%. That’s ironclad. A touchscreen is subject to all sorts of other factors; how fast you swiped, the pressure with which you swiped, etc. Furthermore, the idea of a rear touchpad never really sat well with me. Usually, you have to hold the handheld in a very bizarre way to get that to work properly. This time, though…well, it just works.