Wednesday 22 January 2014

App Review No. 32 Tasty Planet: Back for Seconds

Strong Points:
Stages are named, making them seem more different
Storyline is as funny as ever
Same, old artstyle and graphics
Lots of replay value (although, could get boring)
Lots of levels
Lots of bonus levels
More variety in stages
Larger stages

Weak Points:
Sizing is accurate for some objects and not for others
You can go from metres in length in one level to cm the next
Same old gameplay as the first one with no changes


In-depth Review:

Release Dates:
World Wide: 16th November 2011

Controls:
Tilt the device to move the grey goo
Tap the device to move the grey goo
Use a Joystick to move the grey goo
Use a Track Pad to move the grey goo

You know what? I'm still hungry. What should I go for this time? How about a dino steak? Or a pyramid? Or, possibly a UFO? What do you mean, I'm not big enough? Still? I ate the fabric of the universe for heaven's sake! But then I imploded, didn't I? Oh well, back to the beginning.

The premise is the same as last time; eat small things until you are big enough to eat bigger things. However, this time the scientist who created you knows what he has created and you are only let loose by his assistant when he feeds you candy (of course there is the fact that you can now travel through time, but we'll come back to that later)

You then eat things all over the lab before eating the time machine that the scientist had created, travelling back to the dinosaurs, Ancient Egyptians, Romans, Japanese, and the future. While you are eating your way through history, back in the present strange things are happening: dinosaurs are returning, pyramids are missing and the Roman Empire was never defeated. And, the strangest thing is that it only changes back at the scientists' time, not throughout the whole of history. There are also a lot of bonus levels that you can do at any time that span the entire breadth of history (well only the five eras you travel to in the main game, but that's all that history contains, right?)

There are also a lot more puzzle stages that make the game much more varied than the first time, be it eating a maze made of dinosaur's bones to eating loads of Egyptian mummies. Another thing that makes stages a lot less tedious is the way that when you become so big, the stage zooms out making the size of stage a lot bigger and revealing a lot more objects to eat. If you look around the sides of the stage, you can also notice objects that reveal what the rest of the stage will be about, such as giant moths (soon to be tiny) or huge dinosaurs (soon to be not quite a huge). This adds a lot more depth to the game as well as making it less repetitive.

And for those of you who like a challenge there are the bonus levels. 33 gruellingly challenging levels ranging from eating 60 cats as quickly as possible to using a hoverboard to protect yourself from one-hit kill lasers as you go around a maze. These levels will really prove if you've got the skills to eat them all.

Overall, this game adds a lot to the original without taking away from the uniqueness of the concept but still has some of the tedium of the first game.

Rating: 73%

Goodbye for now, Harry

Update: I can't believe this but, almost two years after the last update, Tasty Planet: Back for Seconds has an update! While it is just to advertise the sequel, Tasty Blue, (watch out for the review later) it does actually contain some content! And that content comes in the form of two new hard bonus levels and two new normal bonus levels as well as some bugfixes. Well, better late than never I guess.

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