Well I really thought this idea had some potential... And maybe it does, if someone tries it again and does it properly. You see, Tornado trips at the first hurdle, falls flat on its face and then keeps tripping over its own flaws unit its maddening “quirks” will have you growling at it in dismay, turning off in anger, throwing your DS in the bin, or worse.
Okay, let’s tell you the plot of the game in order to pad this review out to be more than just a rant-list about the games failings. One day a collector of planets called “the Prince” discovered the Earth and was delighted by what he saw, and wanted all of the “beautiful” objects on the Earth for his home planet, so using his “black hole device” he sucked them all up and transported them home, including Toki the cat and his band of “cosmic cleaners” who were busy cleaning the Earth’s messes up that day with their very own Tornado machines... Mmmmkay?
You control Toki and his gang and have to suck up as many of the objects on the levels as you can within a time limit. Drawing circles on the touch screen powers up your tornado and you can guide it around the map with the stylus or the D-pad. A gauge shows the strength of your tornado and its level (1-5). You’ll need to get it up to lever 5 power to suck up the biggest buildings like Tower Bridge, The Eiffel tower, the Pyramids from around the various levels themed on London, France, Iraq (no, really!) Egypt, Antarctica, United States, Japan, China, South Korea, and bizarrely Rockstar (presumably items related to being a rock star, not the famous games developer).
Okay so to the problems with the game. Firstly the story is banal, childish and utterly pointless; all it does is waste time (fortunately you can skip most of it). Secondly the camera is too zoomed in to your tornado, making it difficult to see where you’re going – particularly when travelling down and left or right, and annoyingly on some levels object that hamper, delay and even damage your tornado can’t be seen at all until you’ve already hit them! Next in line to annoy you is the completely, utterly, unforgivably ridiculous fact that when you fail to complete a level the game boots you right back to the game’s start up sequence, no really, there’s no retry/restart level option, there’s a lengthy delay whilst you’re told exactly how much you failed the level by, then you have to go back to the star menu and reload your saved game! Add to this unfairly tight time limits and you have one deeply annoying little game, and for me at least it’s not a good idea to play Tornado if you’re on the train or the bus – this game could make the pope blaspheme, honestly it could. Then there’s the fact that your tornado can’t pass over all objects until it’s strong enough and even acts “stunned” if you collide with a large building - umm huh?! But most bizarrely of all you’ll often have to find a ramp in order to get your tornado out of a river! To finish the game off the power ups seem ineffectual, except for possibly the dash one (blow into the microphone then choose a direction) and the lightning one, which is absolutely vital in order to get rid of one of Tornado’s other major annoyances; enemies that follow your tornado around and zap it, thus slowing it down and making the game even more ferking-well frustrating. How all these flaws got through game testing I honestly don’t know, and whoever thought including an Iraq level - complete with tanks, missiles, artillery guns, gun-toting soldiers and tons of bombs littered around the map - was in suitable, in good taste or was a clever political statement needs a good kick in the arse.
Tornado claims to have 4 game modes but this is kind of untrue. Story mode is the main game, wifi versus mode (good luck finding someone to play that with), arcade simply plays the same levels with the completion requirement being changed to a percentage of objects being sucked up within the same overly stringent time limit, and bonus mode which consists of “transported items” (a screen where you can see which items you’ve sucked up), “juke box” (a player for the game’s music, which is actually rather well done) and a rankings list – wow wee.
Okay so you got this far? Then you must be either clinically bored, a serial reader, our sub editor or my stalker. If after reading this lot you still have any reservations left about whether to buy Tornado or not then put it this way; do you really want a game that took me 10 days to (eventually) finish just THREE levels of? If you do then you must be seriously hardcore and desperate for a new DS game, or simply mental. I score the game 3 out of 10, one for each level I completed. Tornado? It's more like a bad case of trapped wind...
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