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Atoi and Iota will make you fall in love with DualShock 4. Hard. There’s perhaps no better advert for PS4’s wonderful pad than Media Molecule’s reimagined, origami-inspired adventure. Where before you had the world in your hands (damn those paper cuts), now Tearaway’s universe exists in your pad. Prepare to cavort with your controller like never before. Our mitts are so excited.
“DualShock 4 adds so many new elements by letting you interact with everything,” says Christophe Villedieu, one of the game’s chief level designers. He ain’t lying. Blinding a naughty Scrap by shining the pad’s lightbar into its bulging cyclops peeper… Clicking the touchpad to bounce off the trampoline-like Drumskins… Using the gyro sensor to steer throwable acorns out of the screen and into your pad… If Unfolded got any more tactile, it’d shoot sheets of A3 right at your face.
“Everything has been remade from scratch,” Villedieu assures us. “It’s not a sequel. It’s not a port. It’s something in between.” Clearly, this is no slapdash redux. Considering the studio could have mostly just slathered on some spruced up 1080p textures to the endearing PS Vita delight, the fact PS4 is getting such a radical retelling of the papercraft classic is commendable.
“It’s almost like a different storyteller telling the same story,” adds designer Richard Franke. “But in regards to the actual content, in terms of gameplay and the environments, everything is being remade.” And what we’ve played so far certainly seems to back this up.
Just take the original’s memorable barn level. Though our recent hands-on with the farmyard in Unfolded reveals the stage to be composed of many of the same folds and creases as on PS Vita, the placement of new items and puzzles changes the adorable experience significantly.
Catapults now replace the crude pulley systems of the handheld gem; encouraging you to fling your folded hero into the air by aiming projectiles at giant seesaws via DS4’s gyroscope. All hail motion controls that aren’t rubbish! You’re even able to hurl a squirrel into your pad by pointing it skywards and jabbing r. “You can stroke it using the touchpad and it’ll give off little purring noises through the mic,” Franke tells us.
Unsurpisingly, it all looks gorgeous – the version we play points to Media Molecule nailing its 1080p/60fps target. Still, no cold (if impressive)peddling of numbers could match the simple playful pleasures that come from holding Tearaway in your hands in a completely fresh way. Oh, and obviously… Too. Much. Cute.
