Tentacular is a physics-based puzzler where you take control of a tentacled monster who's raised by the townsfolk of La Kalma, a small village in the middle of the ocean. You're on a journey of self-discovery, trying to find out how you came to be and where you belong.
Using your long sucker-laden limbs to manipulate objects, you must solve over 50 puzzling levels, that’ll take between six to eight hours to complete. These involve a wide variety of silly objectives, like throwing rockets through hoops, catapulting items at towers (Angry Birds style), or stacking shipping containers as high as possible. All these tasks are timed, and global leaderboards will entice you to improve upon your scores.
But while your tentacles are well tracked by the PSVR2 Sense Controllers, we found they often got stuck on the environment; pair this with wacky collision detection and it can be an infuriating experience at times. Luckily, there's a reset switch provided in every level to accommodate for this issue. Easing further irritation is a villager who's always located behind you, and he'll give you hints if you get stuck.
Control issues aside, the haptic feedback is great, simulating the feel of items smacking you square in the jaw as well as any nearby explosions. Eye tracking has also been used to make navigating the menus significantly easier. But despite some good use of the hardware, the rudimentary visual style, while pleasant, doesn't exactly push the technology to its limits.
Still, the scale of the missions really increases as you progress, and later levels — like the excellent heist one — offer a lengthy and complex challenge which we really enjoyed. In addition, we appreciated the sandbox area, as it provides an excellent creative space with access to every object and gadget available all at once.
Comments 9
Sounds like a good review apart from some whacky physics which is usual in these type of games. Might try it out.
Sure it’s a quest port, so poor textures as you say, but it’s also only £20, which is decent for a fun 8hr game.
Appreciate the continued VR2 coverage. Would rather see more short reviews then to do deep dives into these games as there is still a lot of games I'm questioning purchasing.
@KaijuKaiser Excellent point, something that shouldn't be taken for granted. A 20 dollar game is less than a third of the price of a so called AAA blockbuster. Price should absolutely be a consideration in reviews, as if this were 70 dollars I'm sure there would be a lot of griping about it.
@KaijuKaiser I just got done playing this for a while and though I’m only a few levels in im having a blast with it. I didn’t really notice any wacky physics in the hour or so I spent in it and if the rest of the game maintains the same quality I’ve seen so far I agree this is easy an 8 out of 10 for me.
Nice PSVR2 coverage. But how about reviews (or mini reviews) of GT7 & RE Village? These are the main launch games.
@Dr_ENT To be fair these games have got a lot of mainstream coverage and it's all been good. I would rather they keep covering the games that aren't even registering scores on metacritic
@LeeHarveyOzgod @Dr_ENT Don’t worry there’s plenty more PSVR2 reviews on the way
@Dr_ENT There's a LOT in the works, including coverage of GT and Resi.
I’ve been wanting to give this a go ever since I heard David Attenborough do the trailer for it!
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