User blog:TyrantRex/TyrantRex's thoughts on Ty the Tasmanian Tiger

Note: This isn't a proper review, but rather my thoughts and opinions on the game!

I recommend listening to this while reading this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wyIHg-GWydY

Background
If it wasn't obvious enough by my previous blogs of this kind, my favorite genre is the 3D platformer. For several months a friend in another wiki had been recommending I try out Ty the Tasmanian Tiger but for some reason never got around it. Fastforward to me getting back my old Wii a few weeks ago and deciding to get some GameCube games, I went to the store looking for Super Mario Sunshine, it wasn't there, and Ty was there for $10 so here we are.

One thing I like about the 6th generation of gaming is that there were tons of very obscure platformers that never spawned a franchise for one reason or another, those games often aren't the best but have potential and are worth checking out. Ty didn't live for long he did get a trilogy which is more than can be said about most obscure platformers of that era so that's a good sign. HOWEVER, last year I played Jak and Daxter and Banjo-Kazooie and both are still very fresh in my mind, can Ty hold up agains those two giants?

The Game
What is wrong with Ty's mouth?!! I get that he's supposed to be grinning and it works in the 2D artwork on the box cover, but the in-game character model for some reason has the grin on both sides of his face, making it look like he has two mouths? It's a small thing but also rather distracting. This game is about as stereotype Australian as you can possibly get, from the characters, how they talk, the locations, the soundtrack, the species, EVERYTHING. I like that, it can come off as dumb for some people and I can see why but personally I think it gives the game a style of charm, the game knows the type of identity it wants and sticks with it.

The gameplay is your standard collect-a-thon platformer, it basically follows the same structure as Jak and Banjo. The levels have multiple objectives that give you a collectible for clearing them, you need a certain amount of objectives cleared to progress but it doesn't matter which ones you get as long as you have the right amount meaning nothing is strictly obligatory. In my opinion this is a great formula for 3D platformers because it means if there's an objective you don't like for find hard you can skip it, unless you're going for 100% completion. Ty may not do much to change the collect-a-thon formula but it does it well and never feels overwhelming with collectibles *cough*DonkeyKong64*cough*

The main change Ty does to this typical formula is that levels tend to be more linear, there's one main path to follow and a main goal to complete (which doesn't have more priority that the others though) but along the way there are "points of interest" and a few branching paths were the other objectives take place. This is interesting because anyone whose 100%ed a collect-a-thon knows the pain of missing one collectible and wandering around in circles trying to find it, that isn't much of an issue in Ty because the levels have a more clearly defined path and levels are relatively small so it shouldn't take long to traverse them in the first place. There are two exceptions sadly... the Beach and Sea levels. Those levels are more open and have WAAAY too much empty space, expect to walk around in circles for a long time if you want to complete them. Come to think about it... maybe the reason I have problems with open-ended games might be from the PTSD of trying to find that last item in collect-a-thons? Luckily that doesn't happen too often here and most of the time the game isn't particularly frustrating and the objectives are solid on their own.

Ty's main attack is boomerangs because OF COURSE it is. I like the boomerangs as attacks, kind of reminds me of Rayman's fist attacks in Rayman 3 (I need to revisit that game) and there are several different types of boomerangs to use, my favorite being the one where you throw about 10 boomerangs at once. My only problem witht he boomerangs is that if you miss the attack and the enemy is in front of you expect to get hit.

I do have one really big problem with this game that annoyed me constantly... THE CAMERA. By 2002 you'd think cameras would be better, but nope this game's camera is honestly terrible. In fairness, it doesn't suffer the typical problems of early 3D cameras, like getting stuck on walls or refusing to turn around, what's the problem with Ty's camera? It's zoomed in too close, that makes it hard to tell what's around you becaue Ty is too close to the screen, I constantly have to stop and turn around to make sure I didn't leave something behind that I couldn't see because of how zoomed in the camera is. Sometimes the camera is so close that when Ty jumps the platform you want to land on dissapears mid-jump. It also has that really annoying habit of suddenly snapping to another angle while you're platforming which gets disorienting.

Soo... in the end Ty is a rather standard collect-a-thon platformer, doesn't do much different with the standard formula and has a very awkward camera. Is it on par with the most popular collect-a-thons like Jak or Banjo? Not a chance. Is it a solid game worth checking out and enjoyable despite it's flaws for someone who likes classic platformers? I'd say yes it is. As far as obscure platformers from the 6th generation go, Ty is quite good and I've been told that the sequel is better.

One last thing... What is wrong with Ty's mouth?!!