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Tearaway: lots of style

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Tearaway is the game that most made me want a PS Vita, and it's not disappointed.  I loved the idea of LittleBigPlanet but found the execution a bit iffy - and the controls were awfully floaty. I was never going to get into level designing or clever mechanics, either, due to a lack of time.

Tearaway is from the people who made LBP but without the faff, an added dimension, and an even more stylish identity.  Everything's made out of paper - indeed, you can download papercraft templates to make everything in real life - and the many odd control methods on the Vita are used in an intelligent way, only occasionally feeling like they're stuck in for effect.  Poking the back panel pushes up diaphragms or even allows your finger to poke into the world.  The front camera projects your face onto the sun.  The touch screen allows you to directly manipulate parts of the world.  I'm just waiting for the game to require me to shout something.


It's a but of a collectathon in the bad tradition of Rare games, but as soon as you decide that you're not required to find all the presents and photo opportunities and confetti, the journey through the levels is much more fun.  Depending on the length of the game, I may even be back to find more bits.



The levels are nicely varied and there are some clever bits of platforming required.  I've now regained the powers to jump and roll into a ball, and the way in which the levels were constructed before these powers were available was ingenious at times.


I am the "you", and my ugly mug shines down upon the people. Guilt of that alone means I want to carry on and complete this as soon as possible!

Hungry Giraffe: ouch, my head

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A fun little diversion, definitely, but maybe not worth being billed as a full 'game' in the PS Vita 10-game package.  Well worth £2.50 though.

Hungry Giraffe is a tilt-controlled steering game.  You have to get the giraffe to eat food that's hovering in the air, which will then give him energy to reach higher.  If you don't eat enough food, the giraffe's neck will wilt and it's game over.  If you hit the giraffe's head on an anvil, you have to act quickly to recover from a death spiral.


I'm a little sceptical that the difficulty's been fiddled with to encourage further spending.  There are some golden feathers that allow you to rescue a wilting giraffe, but I used all these in my first game expecting them to be replenished in the second game.  They weren't.  I've not investigated to see if you can buy these for real money, but if you can then I suspect this'll be deleted off my memory card to free up space for something else.

Hungry Giraffe: ouch, my head

Posted on Written by

A fun little diversion, definitely, but maybe not worth being billed as a full 'game' in the PS Vita 10-game package.  Well worth £2.50 though.

Hungry Giraffe is a tilt-controlled steering game.  You have to get the giraffe to eat food that's hovering in the air, which will then give him energy to reach higher.  If you don't eat enough food, the giraffe's neck will wilt and it's game over.  If you hit the giraffe's head on an anvil, you have to act quickly to recover from a death spiral.


I'm a little sceptical that the difficulty's been fiddled with to encourage further spending.  There are some golden feathers that allow you to rescue a wilting giraffe, but I used all these in my first game expecting them to be replenished in the second game.  They weren't.  I've not investigated to see if you can buy these for real money, but if you can then I suspect this'll be deleted off my memory card to free up space for something else.

Hungry Giraffe: ouch, my head

Posted on Written by

A fun little diversion, definitely, but maybe not worth being billed as a full 'game' in the PS Vita 10-game package.  Well worth £2.50 though.

Hungry Giraffe is a tilt-controlled steering game.  You have to get the giraffe to eat food that's hovering in the air, which will then give him energy to reach higher.  If you don't eat enough food, the giraffe's neck will wilt and it's game over.  If you hit the giraffe's head on an anvil, you have to act quickly to recover from a death spiral.


I'm a little sceptical that the difficulty's been fiddled with to encourage further spending.  There are some golden feathers that allow you to rescue a wilting giraffe, but I used all these in my first game expecting them to be replenished in the second game.  They weren't.  I've not investigated to see if you can buy these for real money, but if you can then I suspect this'll be deleted off my memory card to free up space for something else.

LA Noire: completed!

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I had only a few missions to complete in that game, it turns out, all of which involved hunting down various corrupt officials and getting them to talk.



I think that shooting him in the leg was probably a bit excessive, but as I said previously the game has taken control of my character's actions in order to progress the story.  This has just got worse as the game's progressed - it's not longer merely Phelps being over-zealous in questioning; it's now Kelso shooting people during cutscenes.

Still, at least I get to drive between these and watch people being shifty.



The endgame saw me exploring a creepy dilapidated house, in which a madman had been holed up.  The game carefully told you that he was mad several times, before showing him folding origami cranes over and over again.  Finding these in the house was quite a shock.





The final missions turned into a run-and-gun cover shooter, with the madman seemingly able to convince dozens of men to lay down their lives just to keep me away from him.  Naturally, that didn't work, but it was pretty tense, running around the sewer systems and popping out to shoot people.  It felt pretty familiar in some ways, reminding me of gameplay in Red Dead Redemption.

I finally found the flamethrower man, who turned out to be someone that Phelps and Kelso had served with.  Funny that all the main characters turned out to be linked in some way, given the size of the city the game's set in.


And then the end of the game sees Rockstar killing off the main character again, but this time I have little sympathy left for him - even after he helped to save everyone else.


After the credits, you can go back and play in free roam mode, which means that you no longer need to worry about how much damage you cause when driving.  I enjoyed that, and ended up with some amusing accidents.


Overall, a great game, but the story was crowbarred in a little, which spoilt the interactivity somewhat.  I hope a sequel could improve on that.