Tearaway is Media Molecule’s first outing as a developer on the PlayStation Vita. Crafting a world made entirely out of virtual paper and utilising the entirety of the handheld’s inputs, can they repeat the magic of LittleBigPlanet or do they fail to make the cut?
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The best game developers have a certain ‘je ne sais quoi’ about them. They have a knack of combining the holy trinity of game design (presentation, story and gameplay) with an unwavering vision of what they want to deliver. Above all, they have a ‘keep it simple’ ethos that runs under the surface of everything they put out.
Nintendo are the masters of this. If you analyse the underlying mechanics behind each of their top titles it’s a concept that can be summed up in a sentence. Rockstar have done it too with the Grand Theft Auto series and countless developers have copied ID Software’s first-person shooter model. Sure, they’ve added gameplay flourishes over the years as hardware has allowed but once you strip it all away the basic systems are the same.
I’d like to add Media Molecule to the list.
As a developer they embraced the ‘Play. Create. Share.’ ethos and gave the world LittleBigPlanet. If you haven’t played it, do. Not because it’s a particularly great platformer but because of all the creativity the community has put together. Want a level that’s like the Total Wipeout TV show? All yours. Gotham City? Done. The Godfather soundtrack while riding a dragster through a forest of horse heads? Yup, it’s out there.
Tearaway is the same, in that it has an unwavering vision of what it wants to deliver combined with great presentation, story and gameplay. What is that vision? Tell the story of a journey through a world made of nothing but paper and utilise all of the PlayStation Vita’s input methods.
To say they’ve succeeded is a spectacular understatement; everything about this game screams attention to detail. They’ve truly created a world made of paper that screenshots don’t do justice to. As you walk through each distinct level plants unfold at your feet, bridges roll out, snowflakes fall… the word is truly alive and vibrant.
The sound too is excellent and, not that I’d ever given much thought to the tone of rustling paper, each fold and crinkle sounds just as you’d expect. The only gripe I would have is that there are certain effects that sound to me as if they’ve been recycled from the LittleBigPlanet games which, given the keen eye shown to all other aspects, seems inexplicably lazy.
Where the game really shines is the use of the Vita’s control set. When the specs were announced the world scratched its head and wondered why so many different features had been added. Well, Tearaway is the answer. They do it cleverly too; it’s not like you can touch the screen or back-pad whenever you like. It can only be done in certain places and each are cleverly marked with a corresponding texture. Shiny fingerprints for the touchscreen, the cross, square, triangle, circle PlayStation motif for the rear touchpad and a wobbly picture of the Vita for tilting.
By the sound of it, such telegraphed interactions should be jarring and drag you out of the world but they don’t because you are in the world. It’s part of the story. You play yourself, gazing down at your little messenger as a beaming face from the sun (front camera – cunning) and your interactions in the world are required by the inhabitants to progress.
It’s not just the front camera that gets a workout: the rear one springs into life whenever you use the touchpad. An on-screen finger tears into the world and the camera fills in the parts behind so it really does look like your godly finger is at work. It’s also used to take photos to add textures at certain points. A moose I met wanted to stand out and asked me to photo something from my world for his coat. As I was on the train at the time, I took a snap of the high visibility area on the back of my bicycle helmet. I met several fluorescent moose from that point onward.
The moose moment is just one of many where your input actually shapes and effects the world. You’ll meet certain characters en-route who will require you to make them something, which you can do on a surprisingly-robust paper designing and cutting mat before handing over to the game character. The first one is a squirrel who asks you to make him a crown. I came up with a shoddy three-point job and a few jewels. It was met with approval and from then on whenever I met the squirrel he was wearing the crown I made for him. The same can be said of snowflakes and burning fires. I made them for my world which means when you play Tearaway, your world will be different. Genius.
By taking photos in-game you can even collect plans and designs for papercraft models of different things to make in your own time in the real world. Again serving as a clever interaction between our world and the game world but (and this is my inner cynic talking) to convince people that yes, you can actually make everything in the game from paper.
Tearaway as a game is designed to be a much more personal experience than Media Molecule’s previous efforts. You can share a few things but this is more about making your adventure your own, literally shaping the world and more importantly, your story how you see fit. Which, in a way, speaks to the fact that you’re playing it on a personal handheld device rather than a big TV screen that anyone can watch.
If I’m honest, I won’t be going back to the game to collect everything up. I feel I’ve seen all I need to see on my adventure through it. This is because the ending is so strong, so charming that it (excuse the pun) wrapped everything up really nicely for me and I’m good with that. If you own a Vita, please give this a go. It’s not some glorified tech demo, it’s a charming, honest adventure that showcases the abilities of the Vita in a way no other developer has. It’s £20 too.
I tweeted a while back that Tearaway had done something to me that I hadn’t experienced since Mario 64. It was lovely, charming, didn’t try to be something it wasn’t or pander to the ‘hardcore’ - Tearaway made me smile.
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