Tornado – Review

	Available On: Nintendo DS Format Reviewed: Nintendo DS Publisher: Ignition Entertainment Developer: Skonec Entertainment Players: 1-2 Online: 0

Tornado, to put it simply, is a game that puts you in control of a tornado as you tear up various landscapes across the Planet Earth playing as a furry cat hero named Toki in his Tornado. Granted, the premise is a little strange, but the idea of controlling a tornado and ripping up several environments is certainly unique. Indeed on paper it sounds like a cracker, but how does it fare in reality? Will you end up getting sucked in by Toki’s storm of a game? Or will it have you running for shelter? Well head on inside and find out in our full review.

As this is a DS game, we all expect a lot of stylus control. Due to the fact you control tornadoes you can probably imagine what the control system is like. You can move in any direction at a rapid pace by just moving the stylus in the direction you want to go, but annoyingly you have to make constant little circle motions throughout the game to keep the tornado alive and kicking. It doesn’t take long for your stylus hand to really start aching, and the whole thing comes across as a massive gimmick. The controls do vary as you progress throughout the game as you learn new tornado powers, and you do get to use the microphone occasionally too. The new skills that your furry friends learn are also easily explained through tutorials that can’t be skipped unfortunately, but thankfully they are pretty short.

It has to be said that the story is frankly, well, boring. Aspects of it just don’t make very much sense, and it just feels like a complete excuse to justify the gameplay. Basically Toki and some of his feline friends get sucked into an unexpected Black Hole and, as a consequence, are scattered all across our Planet Earth. The only two characters that don’t get split are Toki and Gina. So these two, with their crazy tornado machine, set off to find their other four friends. Thankfully there are no pointless cutscenes in Tornado that try to look as graphically impressive as possible, as is the case with many DS games. They are all short and sweet, allowing you to do exactly what you bought the game for in the first place: to play it.

The actual goal of the story mode is to find objects or characters in the various stages, but it’s totally random as to which building it/he/she appears in, so you have to just suck up everything in sight, hoping you’ll find it. But the thing is, it isn’t possible to suck up everything within the four minute or so time limit. You’re lucky to obtain half of the stuff in the level. This gets increasingly infuriating as the game progresses, and coupled with the game’s unforgiving difficulty, the whole experience becomes very frustrating in the later stages. It’s a shame because there’s a lot of potential for a game like this, but it lacks in a lot of key areas.

Other options besides the main story mode are a Bonus mode, an Arcade mode and a multiplayer mode. The Bonus modes contains a juke box which lets you listen to the game’s soundtrack. But why you would want to do that I just don’t know. For me, the music in a game is a key thing, but the tunes in Tornado just aren’t very good. Repetitive and annoying is the order of the day here. Within the Bonus section you can also check which items you have sucked up during the game like, let’s say, a tree…or a duck…or even, maybe…a hedge. It’s one of those things that you just won’t bother with after checking out once. There’s also a rankings section that lists all of the scores you have racked up in the various modes. And, finally, there’s a multiplayer mode. There’s a total lack of any online features, however, but there is a local multiplayer mode. Stupidly though, it requires two Tornado game cartridges.

When I first heard about Tornado I thought it sounded incredibly original. But that all changed when I actually played it. The first thing that came into my head when I started the first level was ‘I Love Katamari’. It seriously is just Katamari, but with a Tornado instead of a big ball. You can suck up literally anything and everything, and when you have collected enough stuff you level up into an even bigger tornado, that’s capable of sucking up even bigger stuff. If you are a fan of Katamari then there is a good chance you will at least semi-enjoy Tornado as it is really just more of the same. But don’t be disappointed with Tornado, because at least there’s the ‘fantastic’ jukebox to listen to all day long.

As mentioned before you get to travel the world in Tornado, which, although unoriginal, is cool. There are ten stages each set in a different country or location on Earth. They go in order of: UK, France, Iraq, Egypt, Antarctic, US, Japan, China, South Korea and, finally….errr…. a place called Rockstar. Whilst playing in these areas you can wander a vast landscape, which has famous landmarks depending on the country. Buckingham Palace, the Empire State, the Eiffel Tower…it’s all here. The annoying thing about the stage design though is the invisible walls around each area. When you get to the end all you can see is a very plain blue sky. You can even see it below you, so it’s almost as if you are playing on a small square piece of the country you’re in, which takes away the feeling that you are actually there. The actual environments are pretty cool though, and are reflective of their real-world counterparts with relevant items and various things to suck up in each stage.

In conclusion, Tornado isn’t an entirely awful game. Sure, it’s a total rip-off of the Katamari games, but it still has its charm, even though there isn’t much of it. Like many DS games on the market, there are gimmicks making aspects of the game, such as the control system, extremely frustrating, but it still manages to be relatively fun. Could anyone not want to suck up the Eiffel Tower or the Houses of Parliament with a Tornado? It isn’t an incredibly long game, and the stages become increasingly difficult so you’ll spend a lot of time re-trying levels. Thankfully though, Tornado is a budget game at £20 and not a full price title, which makes the decision to shell out for this average game a little easier. I would say that it’s a case of love it or hate it, but honestly I can’t see very many people loving it. It could definitely have been much better.