Tearaway

Game: Tearaway
System: Vita
Genre: Platform
Developer: Media Molecule
Release date: November 22, 2013

Pros: Amazing art direction, good music, immersive and interesting use of the Vita hardware

Cons: On the short side, not challenging at all, tedious gameplay


From the makers of LittleBigPlanet comes Tearaway, a visually beautiful game with impressive art direction and and a great sense of style. Unlike the majority of Vita games it uses the Vita system nose-to-tail, so to speak. The touchscreen, rear touchpad, gyro sensors, camera, and microphone are all used creatively and in a way that immerses the player, who, by the way, is able to customize this adventure to his or her liking by way of papercraft models and designs.

That's the good. Now the bad. It's not much fun to play. The game is far too easy. The platform sections, which are few and far between, are simple and straightforward, and, with infinite lives and checkpoints every 20 feet, there is no cost to failure. The same holds true for the arena sections, where waves of disposable enemies appear. They're dispatched with little effort.

Yes, riding a rampaging pig through a field is as fun as it sounds.

Apart from that, the gameplay in general is underdeveloped. There are some interesting sections of the game, slides and piggyback riding most notably. But they're too short and too simple. Platforming is woefully underused and unsophisticated. As mentioned earlier, it's foolproof. And, while the rear touchpad and touchscreen functionality makes Tearaway unique, it serves to make the platforming areas uncomfortable. It's no fun doing finger gymnastics while trying to cross a bottomless pit. The awkward camera doesn't help either.

The best way to describe Tearaway might be as an interactive art exhibit. Using the Vita camera, players can, quite literally, put themselves in the game. They can photograph their living rooms or soda cans or even their own faces and impose those images into the papercraft world. In addition, they can cut custom objects from colored paper using their fingers as a stylus, and customize the hero (or heroine) of the story at an time with a range of facial features and accessories.

In the end Tearaway is an interesting, artistic game that celebrates individuality, but also one that's too easy, too simple, and too in love with it's own papercraft universe.

Guardians of the Galaxy

Title: Guardians of the Galaxy
Director: James Gunn
Written by: James Gunn, Nicole Perlman
Starring: Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldana, Dave Bautista, Vin Diesel, Bradley Cooper, Lee Pace, Michael Rooker

Guardians of the Galaxy is a study on contradiction. It manages, somehow, to parody its source material – indeed the entire superhero sub-genre – yet, simultaneously, produce a sincere, serious sci-fi adventure movie. It’s subversive and self-referential, but it also conforms to the tropes and parameters established by the Marvel Cinematic Universe, to which Guardians, like Iron Man, Thor, and Captain America, belongs. In short, Guardians of the Galaxy, despite its big bankroll and big studio backing, boasts the heart and soul of a budget B-movie. It makes the proceedings a little corny, a little silly, and a lot of fun, and it goes a long way toward making Guardians the best Marvel movie since The Avengers.

Guardians of the Galaxy begins on Earth in 1988. The audience meets a young Peter Quill, who, shortly after losing his mother to cancer, is abducted by an alien spaceship. Fast forward 26 years and Quill, now a professional space pirate, is roaming the galaxy in search of treasure. His latest trophy is a mysterious orb, coveted by the Nova Corps – an intergalactic police force – a genocidal madman named Ronan, and several others. When Quill escapes with the orb, he immediately becomes a wanted man.

Like other movies in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Guardians borrows the worlds, characters, and technology of Marvel’s comic book collection. Unlike many of them, however, Guardians is interested in the extraterrestrial. The results are some spectacular environments, characters, and alien technology, brought to life by cinematographer Ben Davis (Kick-Ass) and makeup designer David White (Thor: The Dark World, Troy). From the rusty, industrial prison known as the Kyln to the cloudy, rocky, and lifeless basins of the planet Morag, Guardians paints a visually provocative picture of life on the other side of the galaxy (think Star Wars meets Heavy Metal).

The unlikely heroes of Guardians of the Galaxy

Inhabiting these alien worlds and environments are the true stars of Guardians of the Galaxy, the motley crew of anti-heroes charged with protecting the galaxy. In addition to Quill (Chris Pratt), there’s Gamora (Zoe Saldana), an assassin with a mysterious past; Drax (Dave Bautista), a muscle man tortured by the death of his wife and child; and, the dynamic duo of the ensemble, Rocket, an anthropomorphic raccoon, and Groot, a sentient tree creature. Rocket, voiced by Bradley Cooper, and Groot, voiced by Vin Diesel, bring a healthy amount of energy and emotion to the movie. Their Han Solo-Chewbacca relationship provides some of the biggest laughs and saddest moments of the movie.

The breakout star of Guardians, however, has to be Pratt, whose muscular, wise-cracking, womanizing Quill is a far cry from the doughy slacker Pratt portrays on the TV show Parks and Recreation. His character, greedy for profit but willing to risk his life for a treasured keepsake, is the anchor that a space opera like Guardians needs. Without him, and director James Gunn’s ironic and knowing screenplay, the movie could easily have become a leaden, self-serious mess. Fortunately, for viewers, the exact opposite is true. Guardians is a breezy, wacky ride full of accidental heroes and fantastic alien worlds that embraces the heritage of Saturday morning serials and pulp fiction. It’s a B-movie with a AAA budget, and it’s all the better for it.