Tearaway: Unfolded (2015)

Every year for Halloween there is a an artists group that puts on a majorly impressive puppet show in my city. These aren't the hand puppet type. These are massive scale puppets. The kind that take 4-5 people to operate and you might see in an European May Day parade. It's a night with a live orchestra, fire effects, and usually works in storyline about remembering the dead. It's put on by over a hundred people and is always a highlight to see.

Tearaway Unfolded reminded me a lot the show. It's jam packed with creativity in every way. It's not just papercraft art, but every scrap of paper in wondrously animated. The bad guys are suitably bizarre. The music is an eclectic mix of kazoos, clarinets, drums, and other instruments that you don't normally hear in video games.

Tearaway has some of most innovative controller use I've seen. The Playstation touchpad and gyroscope that are often ignored are used to their fullest here. 3D platformers is one of my favorite genres and Media Molecule keeps pulling out different twists to keep the gameplay unique. There were so many moment in this game that put a smile on my face.

I thought that what I played of this game was really interesting, but I mostly just wanted to explore the world in it's unique papercraft style. The platforming bits were simple and unnecessary (and slightly unwieldy on PS5), the collecting seemed pointless, and the the voiceover/cut-scenes were too long and unskippable.

Probably only good for young kids as a starting whimsical game or for adults who have playstation plus and want to spend 30 minutes checking out the art style.

I adore Tearaway on the Vita. The art direction, animation, music, characters and storyline all felt so beautifully crafted and so clear in their vision, it was tough for me to even imagine human beings making it (which might be a little ironic given its purposely handmade look and feel). The clever use of the hardware really made you feel as if you were holding a world in the palm of your hand, which made the conclusion all the more moving... few games have pulled at my heartstrings as sincerely and warmly as Tearaway did.

So it feels strange that I'm rating Tearaway Unfolded, the expanded "remaster" of the earlier title, only four stars. I consider Tearaway a five-star game, and all of that game is in here. It just feels tougher to get to.

In the original Tearaway, you'd be staring at the screen and all of a sudden your face would somehow appear. You'd be presented with a cutting board, which you could touch with your fingers to craft little paper designs. You could push your finger against the rear touch pad and have it tear through the world therein. All of this stuff just kinda happened, so it all came with a genuine sense of surprise and delight.

In Unfolded, there's a degree of separation between you and the world. The game constantly reminds you how you could get the full experience if you had the PlayStation Camera, or if you were using the PlayStation App on a second screen, or if you had a microphone connected. These compromises are probably the best options Media Molecule had for accommodating the different hardware, and they're all mercifully brief, but they serve as nagging, consistent reminders of how cohesive the original Tearaway game was in comparison.

To their credit, Media Molecule have done their best to add enough new stuff that makes use of the DualShock 4 specifically. Most, like the mechanic of throwing objects between Iota/Atoi and The You, work really well. Some, like the paper plane, are novel concepts that suffer from poor or glitchy controls. The additional levels are mostly fun, but they make the plot (particularly in the last section) feel a bit more meandering and stuttery than the original.

With that in mind, I can recommend this game to the following groups of people:

Those without a Vita who have never played Tearaway. Either version is probably the best game Media Molecule has ever made, and a really original and awesome platformer to boot.

Those who want a unique co-op experience to play with their kids. The "Second Screen" stuff is particularly great for kids.

And finally, those who love the original Tearaway so much that they're hungry for a "Director's Cut"... even if some of it could have stayed on the cutting-room floor.