HISTORY
After Pangaea was no more, Sony released the Playstation 2.
I did receive one for Christmas 2002, and if you also did, you will remember the original “fat” model was kind of a piece of shit, but besides that, that generation of machines would eventually become the “Twilight Of The Gods” age for the mascot platformer, which was also often the “collectathon” kind of platformer and had already peaked, especially on the Nintendo 64, where Rareware did crystalize decades of 2D platformer and collectible obsession with Banjo Kazooie, before completely quintupling down on this style with the infamous Donkey Kong 64.
While they were starting to feel like a dying trend, it must be made clear that even if they were not as rampant as on the PS1 and Nintendo 64, there were still a LOT of 3D platformers that console generation, either sequels of legacy series or new IP s, because they were still quite profitable, and – while shrunk – the market for these kind of games did exist, Nintendo aside that kept doing their thing as they have been for decades, regardless of trends or logic or many other things.
What i mean by this is that while Naughty Dog continued their platform games legacy with the Jak Daxter series, other studios threw their hat in the ring with new mascot platformer, hoping one day to see them playing golf, tennis or racing each other, and the Australian Krome Studios were certaintly one of those studios that did such a thing, with Ty The Tasmanian Tiger, published by EA Games and released in 2002 on PS2, X-Box and Gamecube.
Makes more sense than having Polish people making games about kangaroos, i guess.
While today the studio is mostly known for the Ty The Tasmanian Tiger series, they also worked on the 2000s-tastic (and for years unfinished) Blade Kitten, two of the Legend Of Spyro games, some licensed movie tie-in fluff (remember Disney Extremely Goofy Skateboarding? I sure don’t), and handled the last gen ports/version of Star Wars The Force Unleashed.
After years of inactivity and non-death, in 2015 Krome Studios ported to Steam the previously Games For Windows /Windows Phone 8 exclusive Ty The Tasmanian Tyger 4, later in 2016, eralaunched a successful Kickstarter to remaster the first Ty game, first on Steam via Early Access, then digitally on PS4, Switch and X-Box One in 2020, with a physical release for PS4 and Switch (the latter bundled with a code for the HD remaster of Ty 2) in 2021.
They would continue this remastering spree with the aforemention Ty 2: Bush Rescue and Ty 3: Night Of The Quinkan, making the entire series available on Steam, which is nice.
I’m basing this review of the PS4 version, though the contents should match the Steam HD version, i can say they match exactly with the PS2 release, since i already played and finished that version years ago (not at launch, mind you) before this recent new HD port/remaster.
PLOT & GRAPHICS
Ty The Tasmanian Tiger lives up to the name, as in, it’s about an anthro tasmanian tiger (kinda) named Ty. But Bubsy was also about Bubsy, so big deal.
The plot is definitely what one could and would call “extremely typical” for a 3D platformer clearly aimed at a 3+ PEGI rating demographic, as in it’s about some mystical hullabaloo mac guffins that the villain, Boss Cass (a cassowary, since it’s all Australian themed), wants in order to harness their power and go on about dominating the whole of Australia (and maybe, later, the world).
Thankfully Ty’s father, before being captured alongside other tasmanian tigers and caged by Boss Cass, was able to make the talismans scatter like Dragon Balls, and when Ty founds one by accident, he’s alerted of the situation by a Obi-Wan Kenobi style Bunyip hologram that warns him Cass is coming back to get a hold of the talismans once again, and embarks on a quest to stop the evil cassowary from getting his way, with the help of allies such as a sarcastic parrot and a koala professor-scientist, among others.
So typical it’s not really worth drawing more comparisons that i’d already made or you could guess, but speaking of which, it’s more on the Spyro side of sense of humour more than Banjo-Kazooie, definitely less obvious innuendos. Again, nothing new or nothing too awful, the characters are ok enough, it’s a serviceable enough ensemble for a game like this, and the cutscenes are decent, though the quality is really cheap by now because the cutscenes are unaltered from the original 2002 release, and they could have used (a complete new dubbing was probably out of the question for budgeting reasons) at least some work or polish, as some do have some “lip de-sync” issues, basically preserved as they were in 2002, for better or worse.
That’s sadly indicative of the remaster being overall on the cheaper side, they just updated the resolution on the textures and models and that’s it, they didn’t do a great job at it, to be honest, as some textures are clearly NOT updated, and yes, i did install all the official patches/software updates. The game did look quite decent.to-good at the time, despite that confusing prospective on Ty’s mouth that on the side, he has this cool guy grin that doesn’t budge when talking, as in the mouth doesn’t open, there’s no transaction animation of him flapping his lips and then closing them back, but the “side grin-mouth” does moves around when Ty talks, because that’s his actual mouth (despite looking like a Alien situation might be afoot), which is weird. Also some character designs aren’t quite… inspired, but passable. And then there’s the lady platypus.
You can also tell it’s a cheap remaster since they also did reuse the same old cutscenes from the original release, which at least has the upside of keeping all the old european languages dubs and text translations (with some new additions like Chinese – modern and traditional – and russian)
Barebones also is the word in terms of new features and extras, you just get alternate costumes/skins for TY, some options, but even most of the extras were already in the 2002 original release (like the goofs, promo material, behind the scenes documentaries) .
GAMEPLAY & LEVEL DESIGN
It would be tempting to describe Ty The Tasmanian Tiger as a crappy Banjo-Kazooie…. because it is pretty much that. Good to know people enjoyed that game too, but there comes the times where you’d wish they stopped enjoying it so fiercely, not even for yourself, but because they just made a rod for their own back, pretty much making people think of Banjo Kazooie and ultimately make one wonder why you weren’t replaying that once more.
There is more than “something” to be said about this just being a very typical, generic 3D collectathon platformer, i mean, some elements aren’t just typical, but almost feel deliberately winking at the games they’re taken from, like, we have the equivalent of the caged Jinjos from Banjo Kazooie, they look legally distinct enough but the jingle for freeing one it’s like 2 notes away from being identical to the one in Rare’s bear-und-bird platformer masterpiece.
To say nothing of how it chooses to list totals, again, clearly copying from Rare’s playbook.
What i find funny in retrospect is that, to be quite honest, it doesn’t even plays exactly like Banjo-Kazooie, but more of amalgamation of that and other popular platformers, in what it’s a kinda odd hodgepotche.
See, Ty jumps VERY high, but also learns to glide once he gets the second base boomerang, like this is a Spyro style glide, despite the concept of it making just barely more sense as it did in Bubsy, and not feeling like the gliding in Spyro, which makes sense in its own absurd way, i guess.
BUT wait, he also has a chomp/bite manouver that can also work to scale some ensemble of hovering items like it’s a Sonic 3D game (with some strings of items floating mid-air you can chomp on in a flash like you’re using Sonic homing attack from the 3D games), while the “rangs” are the main method of attacking for mid to long range. And of course you will find and can obtain a variety of boomerangs, from ice to fire to electrical, with some extras like “infrared rangs” to see some hidden items that do require you spending the golden gears on the lab to obtain.
It’s definitely a case where a lot of the variety of “rangs” is barely used, many are needed to interact with sparsely used contraptions or have such hyper-specific uses they’re pretty much useless, even for completing the game and get every collectable, so you’ll mostly forget you even have these and just switch to the fire, ice and electrical ones when needed.
level designs themselves alternate from mostly linear with place to explore off the beaten path, but also a clear “path” that leads to the end, kinda like they couldn’t decide if they wanted to go proper Banjo Kazooie or that mixed with Crash Bandicoot, which is clearly the inspiration for Ty’s design, heck, there’s even a “hog wild” level, but it doesn’t really play the same, so it’s not a Crash Bandicoot clone iether, as much it’s just a fairly generic 3D mascot platformer from the PS2 age, as the linear levels aren’t really that prominent or linear after the first hours, and it becomes more akin to the open levels of Spyro….to a certain degree,
It’s very Spyro-ish in that you need to learn some abilities from NPCs in the levels themselves, but since the secondary collectables (eggs) don’t carry over, you don’t have to pay these NPCs like Moneybags… and this move learning thing is just in the beginning, not a consistant need to, for better or worse the backtracking is not enforced by having learnt a new ability in later levels.
Speaking of levels, the game is also bad at masking some assets reused over in similar themed levels, especially water ones, and it’s odd because the game implies they’re both supposed to be different levels entirely… and also not, since they have entirely different level designs in them, but characters from the first water based level return, heck, they even reuse the same illustration in the splash/loading screen.
It’s pretty cheap for a 2002 platformer, this isn’ the SNES era, come on, it applies to the snow levels too, it’s not a deal breaker but it’s hard to ignore considering there’s not many levels overall.
Back to progression, yu’ll need more of both the main collectables (thunder eggs) and the golden gears to unlock more boomerang types, the main ones will be given to you by just progressing and beating each areas bosses, there’s no Crash Bandicoot 2/3 style power ups/abilities unlock system.
On a positive note, the developers made many small but also important tweaks and fixes to difficulty, performance and camera controls for this HD ports, so it plays nicely and performs as well as a modern port of a 20 years old PS2 platformers.
DIFFICULTY & LENGHT
Basic is indeed the right word, not toddler levels of difficulty, but still, this is decisely an entry level platformer for most people that might have player 1 one game of this kind before, or none, it’s not Kirby levels of easy and ease, so yeah, but it’s not too easy for older players, if the latter do realize this was never meant to have a Super Meat Boy level of difficulty.
Most games do not, after all.
On the lower of “mid” difficulty, if you wanna put it that way.
Bosses are very, very easy, and some are made extra easier since dying sometimes will NOT have you restart the boss fight from scratch, you’ll just respawn outside of the boss area, though that happens only with the Sly boss since it happens inside a stage and not in its own boss level.
Again, it’s the classic example of it being exactly what is look like, i mean, it looks like a kids game, it has “3 upwards” age rating, it’s exactly that, what should i complain about here?
In terms of content, Ty The Tasmanian it’s not quite huge, as in there are like 10 big levels (plus the ones entirely dedicated to fighting a boss) sparsed around 4 Crash Bandicoot-style level hubs inside the slightly larger (but still small) main hub where you have to get new elemental rangs in order to proceed to the next portal/world and some extra collectables to find in the hubs too.
It has that issue the lesser platformer games often fell into, as in the fact you’re not so much invited as forced to rivisit the levels for more collectables due how the game requires like more than half of the main collectables for each “world”, maybe a personal niggle but i find it more coercitive than it should in terms of design, unsecure you’d wanna replay the stages unless it lowkey forces you to.
It took me like 10 hours to beat it, but because i didn’t remember how many thunder eggs i needed so i often tried to almost complete every level on my first run, i could have easily done in 8 hours
So yeah, on average it takes 9 hours to finish, and like 15 hours max to complete.
Though i’m not complaining much since given the quality here, more wouldn’t have meant much, but on the other hand i did willingly kept playing the stages even after i surmised i had enough of the main collectables, so maybe yeah, they could have used a 4th set of levels (the numbers of rangs and a lot being cut for release also suggest they planned it but couldn’t), but it’s not a deal breaker, i feel in terms of lenght it’s about right for the genre.
In terms of completion there’s not much left after beating the game, again, depends if you – like me – try to almost 100 % complete every level or prefer leaving more for later, and as isaid before, there are some extras to unlock, but not many new to this edition, some skins and the ability to replay some boss fights.
OVERALL EVALUTION
Ty The Tasmanian Tiger is far from the awful game i remember, i’m not sure why i was so offended by its mediocrity/borderline decency some time ago, because while derivative as hell and not that good even in hindsight, it’s not bad, it controls quite decently (also thanks to some quality of life changes made to the camera controls), and while this is a barebones HD port/remaster that mostly has the original content unchanged (minus some minor but sensible fixes and changes to balance, some bug fixes), looking like.. what it is, a 20 years old PS2 collectathon platformer with new improved water reflection stuff and texture resolution upped to HD standards.
On the flipside, the game being so unchanged that it retains the old translations and european languages dub is nostalgic and it lets you see that the game itself did not age as badly as one could surmise (also thanks to a solid art direction and the Australian theme of its anthro heroes) even if it’s still an arguably minor entry in a genre that has seen a revival in the last decade…. and honestly had plenty of better games even in the PS2 days.
It’s a solid average, as in there’s definitely something to it, even if does end kinda in the middle in retrospect, there’s respectable work done here that i do get some people having nostalgia for it, especially if this was their first exposure to 3D platformer, it’s definitely not bad and it has some charm to it, expecially thanks to opting for an Australian setting and fitting cast of anthro characters based on the Aussie wildlife, obviously for a young demographic, but still, the game is quite competent, even though very derivative of other 3D platformers (mostly Crash Bandicoot, Spyro and Banjo Kazooie) and i’m honestly not confortable with calling it straight up “decent”.
Its just fine, middle of the road and not much else, but you can still have fun with it, you really can.
I’d recommend getting in on Steam for the sales and support the devs had for it, but the PS4 version is easy to find cheap as well since it had a normal physical release, so for a tenner or less platformer buffs will have a decent fix from the olden days playable on modern hardware with all that is expected, all things considered.
Sometimes okay is enough for something to be enjoyable, you know.
LEGACY
While it did fail to impress at the time, it sold reasonably well (and review mostly well at the time) for EA and Krome Studios to launch a sequel two years later, with Ty The Tasmanian Tiger 2: Bush Rescue, leading to creating an entire series that proved successful enough, i mean, it’s definitely not a bad result for such a post-90s mascote platformer, though luck would falter, as we’ll see more in detail when covering the later sequels, leading to the aforementioned haitus of Krome Studios and eventual resurfacing with them taking hold of the rights for their series and start putting out ports for PC and modern systems, as part of the new nostalgia for the PS2 and the new appetite for remaster and remakes of old games now regarded as classics or otherwise fondly remembered.
While the studio is supposedly working on a new IP, there are no clear plans on a potential Ty 5, since they said it would require a lot more in terms of resources and cash than they do have know, which lines up in their approach to remastering the entire series, but it’s kinda odd to see that somehow even Kao The Kangaroo, objectively a more obscure and forgotten series with a smaller or less vocal fanbase, had a new entry before Ty did.
So it’s clear the resurrected studio wants to do a modern Ty game, it will just take more time as they do not have the financial and distribution resources they had back with working with EA.
OTHER VERSIONS
N/A: As a reminder, this review covers both my experience with the original version PS2 version, the PS4 HD remaster, which happens to be identical or line with the Steam release of Ty 1 HD, since they launched on Steam (via the Early Access program) these HD ports and then released console versions for PS4, X-Box One and Switch, with Nintendo hybrid home-portable console also getting a complete series collection launched recently this year.
I would assume the Switch versions of these HD remaster to be on par or slightly less performing than the PS4 or X-Box One releases, because i’m not triple dipping for Ty The Tasmanian Tiger.
The original PS2/X-Box/Gamecube releases also performed similarly to what i was able to see and research, there’s no dedicated GBA version or any odd portable port, not this time around anyway.
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