Tommy Tronic

Developer: Oasis Games
Released: Oct 2010
Usual Price: £6.99
Hours Payed: 6
Controller Compatible: No
Rating: 0/5 Stars

GAMEPLAY

There is lots of shooting and leaping around to be done here as our Tommy goes around finding keys of different materials to unlock corresponding doors. You get 12 fairly non-linear, interesting levels to explore - and a great northern accent comin' at ya.. With the score being irrelevant, the game is packed with your bog-standard platforming fun where you must guide Tommy to the elusive portal. In essence, guided by a useful mini-map in the bottom right of the screen, you jump around on various platforms; shoot at various enemies helped by a variety of weapons that you pick up and collect keys to unlock their corresponding doors to enter new areas of the map. This is all with the goal of eventually arriving at the exit portal to set our Tommy free. 



The game is rendered in bright primary and secondary colours and has a very jolly tune running throughout which fits the mood well. Tommy himself talks in a humourous thick northern accent (not one you'll usually find in a video game) so check out his "Going Oop!" when he gets on one of the moving platforms or his cry of "Hmm, vitamins!" as he quaffs a health pill. There are 12 levels altogether but they soon become long and involved and do require quite a bit of patience. There are also moments of frustration when you will take a long period of time to get to an elusive area only to mistime a jump, fall, and have to traverse the whole area again. Save-points, therefore, may have been a useful addition.

PRESENTATION & PROGRESS

Outside of the game, the no-nonsense menu greets you with mostly bright, primary colours to give a childlike feel to the game. You set one of three difficulty levels, select one of twelve levels to load up (unlocked as you progress), select a resolution and choose to have the music on or off. There is also an option to change the controls which I think is a good idea as the default ones make it all a bit cack-handed. Unfortunately there is no Xbox controller support. As far as stats are concerned, there are plenty of sweets, gems and stars to collect along the way contributing to your overall score. All give a satisfying sound as you go about your business but as there is no high-score chart and no storing of results, all this becomes irrelevant.

CONCLUSION

In all, once you've adjusted the controls to your liking, Tommy Tronic becomes a fine romp. All the tried and tested platforming moves that you know and love are here but you will notice that there does become quite a heavy emphasis on jumping which may not be everyone's cup of tea. Two things to note: (1) There will be moments where it will become allowable (and necessary) to shoot through rock. Unfortunately, save for the rock changing to a slightly different tint in colour, this is not made obvious and there is a possibility to miss it making continuation difficult. (2) to pick up items you actually have to crouch down; another element of the game not made clear by the developers and which can also cause annoyance to those not in-the-know. In fact, as suggested, the default key-bindings are just plain baffling altogether and hardly the most intuitive in the world. Jotting down what the key-bindings are for this game is therefore recommended. Finally, I played to Level 6 in this game and found one area to be particularly challenging. Unfortunately, without managing to progress beyond this, I had to uninstall the game.