Reviews

Tornado Outbreak

Posted by jiosis on October 6, 2009
Game review based on: PS3
Game available for: PS3 Wii Xbox 360

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Tornado Outbreak

Tornado Outbreak is a simple game! You play as a small tornado, you grow by destroying smaller objects and once you get big enough you can destroy bigger ones. There are objectives in the game such as destroying a big structure which in order to do that you have to go around and start with smaller objects like plants, chickens and goats, then horses, trees, trucks and finally you get big enough to finish your objective. You have to stay in the shade. For some reason the UV from sun can kill you, so you have a device called “L.O.A.D. STARR” that creates shade for you and you have to find and absorb things called “Fire Flyers” to generate energy for that device. In other words, absorbing Fire Flyers buys you time to get to your real objective.

Either I’m too spoiled with all the great games I’ve played recently or this game is at least two years behind its time. It feels more like a PS2 game than a game designed for any of the current generation consoles.

The storyline makes no sense and the way the cut-scenes are done adds no value to it. In fact the gameplay looks better than its comic book-ish cut-scenes. The way the boss fights are designed do not fit within the game concept and are not consistent with the rest of its gameplay. Is it just me that don’t find button-mashing a fun way to end a stage?

The way destructions happen in the game is so cheesy. Expect no realistic physics or even visual effects from it. If your tornado is not big enough you have no effect on bigger objects and if the tornado is big, the object shakes and disappears. Bigger structures like houses, disappear in pre-defined pieces but still nothing satisfactory.

There is not much to say about this game. It’s like Katamari but with a tornado instead of a ball. Kids should find it fun to play especially playing co-op split-screen but I don’t believe it is worth $40-50.

Review followed up by mikestrife
On October 22, 2009 / Game review based on PS3

Let’s not even beat around the bush here, Tornado Outbreak is a game that’s trying to cash in on the success of the Katamari series. The concepts are nearly exactly the same. Enough has been changed to make Tornado Outbreak feel like it’s on game, but most of those changes are not for the better.

First let me describe the game. In Tornado Outbreak you play as an alien character that can generate a tornado around yourself. You go around the environments destroying everything you can, and when you destroy enough, your tornado increases in size and you can destroy larger things, and so on. You can’t go in the sunlight, so as you grow your tornado in size the amount of shade nearby will increase and you can get to other parts of the level to continue. There’s also some boss fights, and collectables.

Tornado Outbreak also features a story… a bad story. While Katamari relies on its cute silliness and Animal Crossing style voices to deliver a crazy plot, Tornado Outbreak tries WAY too hard to deliver a serious adventure. The plot is that you are part of some alien force that makes planet inhabitable, but then you come across another alien being who was defeated by his enemies and had his power orbs stolen from him, and his enemies have hidden those orbs on earth and left these fire things there that will prevent him from getting the orbs himself, so you have to go and collect the orbs by destroying everything in sight. Yeah, that’s the plot, well the beginning of it. You can bet it get’s worse from there with a plot twist that everyone sees coming from the first cutscene.

The gameplay itself is just what you’d expect from the description, but the visual depiction of how you break things apart is very cartoony. I know it’s the one thing that keeps this game from being offensive (in the wake of all the recent disasters), but it’s also the one thing that keeps this game from being fun. As a tornado I want to see the carnage and mayhem I create. I want to see building come apart piece by piece and the leaves on the trees get ripped off one at a time. I know the budget on this title probably didn’t allow for anything that intense, but this would be a whole different game if it was made with the latest Red Faction engine. Instead of that coolness you’ll see buildings shake and cars crumple before “poofing” away. And the occasional cow gets thrown.

Another problem with the game is that there’s no overhead view, and you can’t move the camera up or down. You’re stuck with the camera behind to tornado, and as it grows it just obscures more and more of the screen. It can get difficult to see what’s in front of you to destroy, so I’m not sure why the don’t let you move the camera up at will, or make the tornado transparent.

The once interesting aspect of this game in the chaining system. As you go through the levels, you’ll encounter these little fire creatures you have to capture, they are hiding in nearly everything, and if you grab one you’ll start a chain. You can immediately hold a button that will slow your speed over time, but allow you to chain up all the fire guys you can. Absorbing them all at once will give you some additional time, and does add some strategy to the levels.

Overall Tornado Outbreak is a game that’s only fun for a little while. It’s not terrible but you’ll get tired of it fast. The biggest problem is just that it has nothing on Katamari, so you should be playing that instead.