Tornado (DS)

GameSpot editors' review

• CNET editors' rating: 2.0 stars Mediocre
  Detailed editors' rating
  Overall score: 4.5 (2.0 stars)

• Reviewed by:
  Austin Shau
• Reviewed on: 11/25/2008
• Released on: 10/27/2008
• Originally published on GameSpot: Tornado (DS) Review

Tornadoes are normally associated with destruction--destroying homes, launching cows into the air, and appearing as a cathartic disaster option in SimCity games. In Ignition Entertainment's Tornado for the Nintendo DS, though, you use the titular weather phenomenon to restore Earth to order. With a design much like Katamari Damacy, the game sounds like it would be strangely addictive, but because of a few major slipups, Tornado ends up being frustrating and potentially disastrous.

In Tornado, a character known only as The Prince has sucked up Earth's countries into his own realm for safekeeping, and it's your job--as one of several anthropomorphic felines known as Cosmic Cleaners--to put them all back in place. The cleaners can spin themselves into large tornadoes that transport any item they come in contact with. Each successful transport causes your tornado to grow in size, giving you the ability to transport even larger objects. There are special items strewn about each level that will help you gather up more objects--such as the power-up that temporarily sends three tornadoes in different directions to do your bidding--if you meet certain conditions and apply the correct touch-screen technique.

The most noticeable issue rears its head almost the instant you begin playing your first level. The camera--which gives you an isometric perspective of the polygonal playing field--is, in many instances, too close to everything. Even as your tornado grows and the camera pans out, you can never see as much as you'd want to. Learning where landmarks are on a given level then becomes more of a chore than it should be, and this is especially irritating when you're presented with goals such as "find five batteries before the time limit is up."

The pairing of goals with a time limit is another significant issue. Throughout the course of the Story mode, you must find fellow Cosmic Cleaners to use during gameplay. Yet they're sometimes hidden in random structures throughout the level, and there's no indication where you should start looking. By themselves, these goals aren't entirely offensive, but trying to find a randomly hidden character within five minutes--not to mention having to spend time to enlarge your tornado to an effective size--can be infuriating. The game is just unnecessarily difficult, and it wouldn't be exaggerating to say that you might retry some levels 20 times just to pass them.

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Tornado (DS): $18.80

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