It’s difficult not to be immediately charmed by Tearaway. It’s colourful, vibrant visuals and pleasing, tuneful soundtrack is enough to appeal to the child in all of us. It reminds you of a time when gaming was a simpler joy, before achievements and trophies and the annualised generic FPS, there existed the humble platformer that gave us happiness from simply completing the journey from A to B, defeating obstacles along the way.
Not only does Tearaway therefore appeal to our inner child, but it encourages us to express that side of ourselves, especially the creative aspect. This is achieved through the game’s wonderful ability to not only stimulate creativity to help create a game world that is entirely our own, but by giving you objectives centred around coming up with new designs for many of the NPCs and environments. This side of the game is not only brilliantly fun but immediately accessible. I myself am not creative at all, yet I found cushions in my living room to make a very handsome squirrel coat.
This imaginative aspect of the game is beautifully complemented by the gameplay which makes wonderful use of the Vita’s many excellent hardware features that many titles have so far not been able to make significant use of, including the front and rear cameras, the touchscreen and the rear touchpad. Unlike many of the other titles that Vita has to offer which are great in their own way, Tearaway does a superb job of utilising these hardware features without feeling like a gimmick. It feels very much like the features were designed with this game in mind and it would be wonderful to see more games on the Vita use them in a similar way.
These are just some of the wonderful aspects of Tearaway but the overall impression it leaves is of a beautiful, unique game that the Vita needs to see more like. In such a dreary, often miserable real world, Tearaway is a colourful, musical breath of fresh air that provides a wonderful escape that will be difficult to top for a long time.
