Explore a spectacular world held entirely in your hands. Embark on a unique adventure from the creative minds behind LittleBigPlanet™ with your new friend, the adventurous IOTA or the intrepid ATOI — a papercraft messenger from another dimension with a unique message to deliver — to you!

Tearaway is a new IP from the creative minds at Media Molecule (which brought us the Little Big Planet games) and is also their first Playstation Vita game. This game is heavily promoted by Sony and before going any further, take note that this is one of the best games I played on the Vita, and definitively the most original one!

Tearaway – Trailer

In Tearaway you can choose to play as either Iota (the male character) or Atoi (the female one). Your goal is to help the character bring a message to “You” (the player) by going through Tearaway’s world. On that matter, you’ll often see yourself in the game because “You” are a god in Tearaway and the front camera often captures you when playing to bring you directly in the game.

Gameplay

Tearaway is a “cute” third person platformer that makes brilliant use of all of the Playstation Vita input features through the course of the levels. You will often have to interact with the game using either the touch screen or the rear touchpad (exactly like what is shown in the following picture). You literally have their world in your hands!

Tearaway’s gameplay is also composed of a few sequences that require you to create pieces of artwork using a very well done drawing board. By using the few colored sheets available, you can create some amazing textures that can then be appended in the game’s world. It even features a camera with which you can take in-game pictures to upload to the community.

The level design in Tearaway is very well done: it perfectly blends relatively easy enemy encounters (named Scraps) with nice platforming sequences that sometimes looked similar to the ones in Little Big Planet. The levels aren’t usually too long for players who will only want to get through the story, but they also feature a ton of collectibles that hardcore gamers will want to discover!

Art Style and Soundtrack Every level, character, and object in the game have been carefully paper-crafted by hand. The game is visually the best I’ve seen on the Vita: it has a rock solid frame rate, and all of the models in the game are particularly well done. You can even download and print real-life papercrafts once you’ve unlocked them in the game! The soundtrack is also very good and perfectly matches the world and feeling of Tearaway.

Final Thoughts

Tearaway is really a unique and fun game! I liked playing through it and I loved the incredible world that Media Molecule has created. The level design is clever, and the game makes good use of the PS Vita input controls. There are also a lot of collectibles to get in the various levels, and the game even has an accessible Platinum Trophy. The only negative thing I noticed is that the storyline is a bit childish at the beginning, but it does gets better once the game progresses. After finishing Tearaway… I definitely want to see a sequel!

Tearaway Community: Tearaway.me

[review pros=”Fully uses the PS Vita features
Incredible Art Style
Clever level design
Lots of exploration to do outside the main story” cons=”Starts a little too ‘childish’” score=90]

Cost: $35.99

PSN Game size: 947MB

You can purchase Tearaway from the PSN.

Disclaimer

This review is based on a retail copy purchased by the reviewer.