Tearaway Review

Hidden away amongst the touchpads, gyroscopes, cameras and unfulfilled potential of the PS Vita, a secret world has lay dormant for two years. A land constructed entirely of paper called Valleyfold is ready to burst into life in your very hands.

The PS Vita acts as a kind of portal bridging the beautifully playful world of Valleyfold with our more serious realm, through which a level of interactivity and immersion is found, the likes of which have never been seen before on any other platform - largely because the PS Vita is the only one capable of housing such a world.

A basic platformer at its heart, Tearaway sees our two worlds collide, and as either envelope-headed messenger Iota (if you decide to play as a boy) or Atoi (as a girl), you are tasked with delivering a message to a new deity that has suddenly appeared in the sky. The deity is you, as the PS Vita's first gimmick is used from the off – the front camera casts you as this new godlike entity as the construction paper inhabitants of Valleyfold look up to you in both awe and fear. Charmingly, you, or rather the human race, are known by these two dimensional inhabitants as “Yous”.

After no time at all, it dawns that Media Molecule, already having proven themselves with the Little Big Planet series, have pulled out all the stops to bring the first truly unique and essential title to Sony's incredible, but underwhelming machine. The immersive gameplay doesn't stop at simply casting you in its plot, this is just the tip of an incredible iceberg. Very soon you find yourself aiding Iota through the world, using the rear touchpad to help him jump, move obstacles and platforms to get from A to B. You can solve puzzles by bringing your fingers literally through the touchpad into the game, use the main camera to take pictures in the real world and adorn Valleyfold with your efforts, and use Iota's in-game camera (with help from the PS Vita's gyroscope for aiming) to bring colour to blank objects.

And there's a vast amount of customisation to be found too. On the surface, when, say, you are tasked with giving some birthday card-looking character eyes, the options available are limited. But you can instead, or as well, take to the cutting mat and draw what you want on a variety of coloured papers, cut them out and stick them on. There is a lovely sense of childhood throughout the game, but nowhere more so than at the cutting mat. 

Drawing things for characters, for example the squirrel who has lost his crown(!), forces you to regress back to primary school and draw crude crown-shaped illustrations and adorn it with jewels, or rather coloured blobs. The touchscreen is utilised for drawing as you use your index finger to guide the pencil around, and while the touch interface of the Vita is very accurate and generally well calibrated, index fingers are chunky and you can't really see where exactly you are making a mark under your finger. Even talented artists' efforts are given a condescending 'A for effort', gold star at school, stick it on the fridge feel. But this is the point. Even when your drawings are cut out, the animation is of blunt safety scissors.

There are so many nice little features using all the PS Vita's gimmicks to beyond their potential, it's easy to forget there is a game hidden somewhere amongst all these drawings, pictures and general arseing about. The premise follows many other platforming games out there, though you begin the game with very few abilities other than being able to take a mean picture. Iota can't jump or shoot, and is totally reliant on you to tap the rear touchpad to make him jump, though only at predetermined pads adorned with PlayStation shape symbols. Iota can throw enemies, though he must wait until they attack, miss and stun themselves before you can perform this move. Enemies are little bits of paper called Scraps that have emptied out into Valleyfold from the void that bridges our world with theirs.

To be honest, this “You” here didn't think much of Tearaway at this point; yeah, the PS Vita is being used well but it's masking a very lacklustre gaming experience underneath it all... but very soon Iota learns new tricks, and can soon jump at will with the X button, and can dispatch enemies by means of a concertina-like device that blows them into oblivion. It doesn't take long for Iota's abilities to level up enough that his total dependency on you to get him where he's going and to survive along the way is gone. With each new area of the game and new ability, Tearaway becomes so much more fun to play, and puzzles become more ingenious and intuitive in their simplicity.

Some areas require you to guide Iota with the left analogue stick, whilst tapping the rear and front touchscreens in tandem requires some good timing and patience. Puzzles see you bouncing acorns around a crude vertical maze to release them into Iota's hands, stemming water as it flows so you can pass it without becoming some wet papery mush. Truly a great deal of time and effort has been put into Tearaway to bring an experience that is unobtainable anywhere else, right up to the world-fusing, charming yet poignant conclusion.

At approximately eight to ten hours, it is a disappointingly short game, but crammed so full of content and ingenuity that it doesn't matter. The world itself, even as it opens up early on, is painfully linear, but that shouldn't matter, really. You fill the world so full of your own drawings, creations, photos, even your voice, that even in its linearity a totally unique world is formed, and naturally no two playthroughs are ever quite the same. Just be prepared that, when reliving your childhood during Tearaway, the immaturity coursing through you can come back later on in the game to haunt you. Of course, when one character asked me to decorate his face, I drew a crude phallus and placed it right between his eyes. He became more of an important character than I thought. And my classic 'spaz' face, taken for a photo early on, was found on posters and pro-You propaganda throughout the game.

The full Tearaway experience doesn't just end there. Amongst all the collectibles littered throughout Valleyfold are some links to a personal section of Tearaway's website that shows you how to construct your very own real life paper characters and objects from the game. The origamist in me loves this level and style of bringing creativity to life for the player, and can go rather far in getting children to look up from their handhelds and experience the real world from time to time.

Overall, fans of Little Big Planet should feel warm and content with Tearaway's familiarity and style, from gibberish-speaking characters to an iconic and customisable protagonist, despite the distinct differences in gameplay mechanics. Tearaway is a cracking step up from Little Big Planet: PS Vita, which, in itself, put most of the PS Vita to incredible use. Tearaway expands on this to levels beyond expectations. It's not a perfect game, as the platforming or basic combat with Scraps could use more innovation in places, but it's an incredible effort and a cracking beginning of a unique franchise. Given enough time, Iota could potentially give even some of the better and more original Mario games a run for their money, but as it stands, Tearaway definitely gets a gold star and adorns my fridge door for years to come.