Plot: What’s it about?
In The Last Tinker: City of Colors, you take control of a monkey boy who seeks to unite the world through beautiful colors. If that doesn’t make you want to pick up this game, I don’t know what would. You play as Koru, who discovers he is a tinker and plans to use his skills to save the world. While Koru’s home in the Outer District allows colors to live freely, the rest of the world is forced to exist in a bland, colorless state. But Koru is determined to change that, harnessing the power of the various colors to wash away the dullness and revive color worldwide. The basic game mechanics here hinge on platform elements, with some combat and puzzle twisted in as well, so there is a nice variety of stuff to do. The platform elements are kind of auto-parkour, which is odd at first, but the game soon puts in some added obstacles that inject some challenge. You’ll be able to slow down time and switch from rail to rail, so what starts off as just holding down the run button soon becomes more interactive. The approach is kind of novel for a console game and has some hiccups, but overall it is well implemented.
As far as combat, you have access to a few color based abilities that give you a nice edge on your foes. For instance, blue can freeze enemies and green can force them to run away, so you can tailor these to your current combat needs. The colors also offer unique special moves, which you acquire by filling up a gauge in combat encounters. You can slow down time with green or gain damage for a while with red, so all of these different color talents really enhance combat. The basics of combat are strikes and dodges, so you’ll master that aspect pretty quickly. Adding in the various color skills spices up the combat and adds some much needed depth. As you progress, you collect loot and can use it to unlock new upgrades including new abilities. These provide even more variance to the experience and by the time you near the game’s end, you’ll have quite an arsenal to draw upon. So in the end, The Last Tinker offers a rock solid amount of content, though replay value is somewhat limited. I also experienced some slowdown at times, which wasn’t fun. Despite some minor issues, I had a lot of fun with The Last Tinker and while it might not be bleeding edge in terms of performance, it is well worth a look.
Video: How’s it look?
I wouldn’t call the graphics here cutting edge, but the visuals are enjoyable and more than solid. As the title would suggest, the colors are vivid and bold, certainly a focal point of the visual design. The character designs are well done and level design as well, though this could be mistaken for a last generation game. Even so, it looks good and shines where it counts, so I think players will be satisfied.
Audio: How’s it sound?
The sound design is basic, but gets the job done. The audio has a light, enjoyable tone that harkens back to old school style platform games. Kind of cartoon based, but not over the top silly, so that is good. The music is fine and doesn’t test your nerves, while other elements perform well also. Not much else I can talk about here, this is a good, but not great sound design.
