It feels unfair to compare this game to the previous 3 installments of the game, considering back then Krome had the big budget publishing of EA behind it. But slapping a "4" on the game's name, makes it a bit hard not to.
I grew up playing the first two Ty games, never played the 3rd and frankly didn't even know it existed.
So when i saw a Ty game on steam, before they remastered and re-realeased the first 3 games on PC, i bought it. And can't say i'm impressed. And this is not because it goes from a 3D game to a 2D game but because it just feels floaty and unpolished, and even unfair at times.
I've been killed numerous times by either flying enemies or enemies in water that just pop out from terrain, not like nose sticking out to give you a fair warning that "An enemy will charge out from here" no, i swim down a tunnel, and out from the side an eel just pops out and kills me.
There's also annoying sand throwing crabs that lurk on the bottom, so have fun swimming down in any water level and getting hit out of nowhere because a crab that's out of view, threw a projectile that you couldn't even see on screen, because Ty when swimming down is not in the center or top of the screen, he's still in the bottom corner.
Some jumps feel like they were made so you need to make a pixel perfect jump to make it, boomerangs in the shop don't really tell you well what they are used for, the charged attacks you need to do to kill certain enemies cost opals (currency) to do, and has a charge up time where if you get hit when doing it, you still lose your opals, and you pretty much have to jump and charge your shot, or you risk hitting the ground and also losing your opals.
There's no hub world so after mission chapters it literally just boots you out to the menu. And from there you click tabs to go to the store for boomerangs and outfits. Couldn't just make some straight road hub world that you walk back and fourth in to enter different stores and world areas, you gotta kick me out to the main menu?
Hitboxes feel very floaty and platforms are poorly telegraphed whether you're on the edge or not because they aren't drawn in a side profile view, but rather drawn in a angled side view, and i do think i know why this is.
I recognize some of the platforms in the game as ones done for concept art that you could find as paintings in the first Ty the tasmanian tiger game.
So they've literally taken some of the concept art assets from previous games, and tried to make them into 2D platforms for a game.
Now, i'm not against the idea of recycling stuff from previous games, but. To take concept art, and try to adapt collision to it when it was made with the intention to give someone doing 3D modelling an idea of what the thing should look like? That's a bit of a stretch when it comes to re-using.
I've also had problems like 4-5 times where either after completing a mission i can't click to progress the NPCs dialogue, it just stops responding.
And other times when i've died it gets stuck on the zoom out paw icon and never respawns me, so Ty just lies dead in a black void forever.
Ultimately, either if you're a fan of the previous 3 games or not, i wouldn't recommend this game on its own merits. It feels unpolished and is more annoying than anything, especially if you have no prior knowledge on how some boomerangs work and enemies are weak to.
I guess the one positive is i'm pretty sure a lot of old Ty fans bought this game, and it was enough to show Krome studios that there was enough interest to remaster and bring the previous 3 games to Steam.
P.S
I was struggling with a few jumps in this game, and checked the forums for answers. Someone pointed out that having a screen refreshrate higher than 60 clips your jumps and makes certain jumps completely impossible.
You cannot limit framerate in game, you must do it from your screen settings.
Again, horrible game.
