L.G.C. |Reviews| — Tiny & Big: Grandpa’s Leftovers

By Pedro Mateus

grandpas-22Tiny & Big: Grandpa’s Leftovers was developed by Black Pants Game Studio using their own native engine, which has been in development since 2002, and they’ve called it the Scrape Engine (which if you ask me it’s pretty damn fitting for T&B:GL). If those ten years between ‘02 and ‘12 did anything, was ensure all 3 of us at LGC could run it out of the box; just fired up Steam, push install, wait and play.

With the Makings of Work out of the way we kick into the Shiny category, this week Venn decided to add Sound as well. While not exactly an audiophile, our mostly benevolent overlord does like his beeps and boops and that’s where Tiny and Big fell short, with its repetitive music and the lack of voice acting (grunts and beeps don’t count). Jordan on the other hand simply didn’t think the graphics, crisp as they were, deserved the fabled third lawn chair. Me… Well, I’ve played some games that would fall far shorter in the audiovisual race and so I gave it the full score with the one caveat that you actually have to look for the cassette tapes to keep the repetitiveness of the music down to a minimum.

Kicking into the subjective realm, all three of us agree that it wasn’t perfect in our Fun and Controls category. Venn thought the Tutorial was unnecessary given the fact the very first level already provides with a run down of the tools, Jordan’s ADD kicked in after a few minutes of gameplay (means he got bored) and as for me, even though controller support was there, I couldn’t get my Dual-Shock 2 to work. Don’t get me wrong, the game does have some very fun mechanics and all three of us agree that the Omni-cutting LASER alone is enough to make even the skeptic inside prance around like a preschool girl.

For our Final word on Black Pants’ game, it gets a very solid pair of lawn-chairs which means that at $10 USD you should definitely check it out. Good job guys!

Verdict- 


 Scale: 

Nooope

– Check it out

– Shutupandtakemymonies


Game:

Tiny & Big Grandpas Leftovers

http://www.tinyandbig.com/

Trailer- http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=4e9oke6mOZs

Released on Jun 19, 2012 by Black Pants Studios. It’s a comic styled jump and slice platformer with the unique ability to shape a whole world at your will. I.E. you cut sh*t up with a friggin “laser”

Requiremanets:
Core2duo / Athlon X2 with at least 2.4 GHz

GeForce 8800 series / Radeon 2900 series or better.

Linux:Tested on Ubuntu, Mint and SUSE, 32 or 64 bit. Please install the packages for OpenAL and SDL using your distribution’s packaging system.

Available for $9.99 on Steam / GOG / Gamersgate | Amazon boxed copy $9.99.


Makes with the working:

Venn-  

Jordan

Pedro


 OVERALL-


Shiny / Sounds:

Venn-

  • I really dig the art style. The graphics are nothing impressive but the textures are clean and the animation smooth. Really gives you the feel of being in a massive world. Hip little soundtrack; but gets repetitive at times. The “voice acting” is a series of grunts and squeaks forcing the player to read the dialogue.

Jordan-

  • The graphics are pretty good, the soundtrack is alright.    For a linux game it definitely looks better than some of the competition, but nothing phenomenal.

Pedro-

  • I love the songs and if you explore extensively you can find plenty of tapes to keep the repetitiveness to a minimum. The Graphics, unlike the RC Monster Minis thing actually find the perfect balance between stylized and realistic and I love that. Awesome sauce!

 OVERALL –


Control / Fun:

Venn-  

  • They cocked up the intro. You spend ten minutes sorting the gameboy themed tutorial and BAM! The first level walks you through the same thing. That said, the controls are tight (for the most part) and carving up the gameworld is hella neat. At $10, Tiny and Big: Grandpa’s Leftovers is worth it for anyone looking for a proper distractotron.

Jordan-

  • The Controls are pretty good.  At first I was using my keyboard, but quickly realized that my logitech controller worked out of the box.  I had fun slicing shit up and blowing it away with rockets, but I got pretty bored fast.

Pedro-

  • Couldn’t get my Dual Shock 2 to work with this game. Not that I would have played with it, but I like to know whether or not the option was there. Other than that, it’s really awesome, the environments are reminiscent of Uru: Ages Beyond Myst although I would have loved Uru if I had an all powerful laser to cut through walls and make bridges out of the chunks. The Watercooler factor also ensures no one will have the same experience and most people will have found the weirdest ways to get through the puzzles.

 OVERALL-


Verdict-

 

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