Review: Tearaway

From the minds behind LittleBigPlanet and LittleBigPlanet 2 comes the 3D platformer, Tearaway. Honestly, Tearaway is one of my favorite games that I ever played. I kind just spoiled the review a little, though I couldn't help it. Tearaway is just full of creativity, humor, and the most important factor of them all, fun.

The story stars the messengers, Iota or Atoi (Depending if you choose male or female.), and the You. The You is well you. As the You, your goal to help the messengers deliver a message to you. The game places you into the game using the front facing camera to put your face into the sun or whenever you use the back-touch pad your finger comes out from the ground. Being in the narrative doesn't cause any weird disconnect as Tearaway’s world and yours interact. It works really well and makes the ending a really touching experience with a great message.

Tearaway controls like a everyday 3D platformer, though due to the PS Vita having some unique functions that other consoles don't have it takes a very unique twist with how you play. Every single feature that there is on the PS Vita, Tearaway uses it and they all work wonderfully. Using the touch screen to interact with platforms and poking nasty enemies called Scraps, using the back-touch pad in certain areas allows your finger to tear through the floor to interact with objects or platforms, and for some quests you take real world pictures with rear facing camera for various applications. For example, there is an elk that had lost her color in her fur. She requested me to find her a more vibrant fur. I took a picture of grass in my backyard and the grassy texture covered the elk.

Tearaway has some of the best graphics I have seen in a video game. Tearaway’s levels are entirely made from sheets of paper. The levels are beautifully designed and each piece of paper seems to be an animated object of it's own. It makes the locations look vibrant, dynamic, and just fun to play through.

Within the environments there are secrets and unlockables hidden behind tabs of paper that you'd pull with your finger or using the positioning of the camera to cleverly hide these secrets. The secrets consist pieces of confetti, presents, and certain objects in the environments that you have opportunity to take photos of  with the in-game camera your messenger receives.

The unlockables are very unique in Tearaway. With the confetti you can buy paper parts to completely customize the messengers. You can purchase eyes, mouths, and other accessories. Players are also able to draw their own accessories using sheets of paper of various colors with the touchscreen. There is really no limit what you can do and all of these customizations carry over into the cutscenes which is awesome

I mentioned about the opportunities to take photos of certain objects in the environments with the in-game camera. When you take pictures of these certain objects you unlock directions on how to make paper-crafts out of these objects out in the real world. Which is a very neat and fun way to do unlockables within a video game.

Everything just works so well together in Tearaway. The soundtrack is really good, unique, super catchy and it fits with the game's paper crafted world well. All of the PS Vita's features work well to make Tearaway an interesting and fun experience for all ages. Tearaway is one of my favorite games for the PS Vita and even one of my favorite games of all time. Tearaway is a well crafted classic that is a must buy for every PS Vita and a game that can not be played on any other console.