I wasn't entirely sure what to expect, popping the cartridge out of the shiny-gold case. were certainly pulling out all the marketing stops with this glitzy game box. Tingle, as some may not be aware, is a character we have met before in Hyrule. Back in Wind Waker on the Cube not too many hours in, you free the little chap from his temporary prison. Unless you had a GBA and a link cable you never really got full value out of this little fellow, but his mischievous spirit seemed to live on and find fruition in the form of Twilight Princess's Midna.

The game starts with the middle-aged (35) Tingle worrying that his life has past him by and being offered a chance to escape his hum-drum existence to the glittering fantasy of Rupeeland. Like many of our mid-life escape fantasies though, it turns out not to be all that it promised to be. All he can do is suck it up and get to grips with his new habitat, and its finance-motivated inhabitants. As the name suggests nothing can happen here without some oiling of the palms with a clutch of Rupees, their currency of choice.

I was pleasantly surprised by the erudite and succinct writing that outlined this opening. Even better, it was not long before I could get my hands dirty and get on with the task in hand. I was immediately struck by the attention to detail. It felt like going back some 10 years to a day when developers pawed over their releases likes works of art.

Here, Nintendo seem as good as ever at giving their ideas the time and space to properly germinate and form a coherent experience for the player. This is most evident in the visual environment. Again like the adventures of old, Tingle is rendered via bitmaps rather than geometry. Because time has been spent on the different animations and graphical interactions, the environments have a crafted feel to them. Whereas many action adventure games of this ilk can feel sparsely populated or automatically generated, Tingle has evidence of a creator's hand through each and every room. Simply put, it's a joy to explore, meet, poke and tap your way around the place. To use a reading metaphor: the game's a real page turner.

This ocular titillation is accompanied by sensible and well-resolved controls. You move Tingle around with the D-pad, then interact with objects by tapping. This keeps things simple and again shows wise restraint from Nintendo, lesser teams would have tried to cram too much onto the touch screen. The controls work really well, and like any good scheme, can quickly be forgotten as you press on with the adventure. As with the look-and-feel, the controls also seem to hark back to happier point and click days where adventures starred mostly pirates and monkeys.

As its name suggests, the game is built around finance in the form of the humble Rupee. These gem stones form the backbone of the game's structure. They are a measure of health for Tingle, run out and you instantly die having to restart the section once again. They are used to obtain information from locals and purchase equipment. This unit of worth is then played with by the game in novel and frustrating ways. For example, sometimes you are offered a Rupee reward for helping one of the locals. However rather than giving you a set amount, you are asked how much you think they should pay you. Ask for too much and you risk offending the potential benefactor, ending up with nothing; ask for too little and you obviously miss out on a hefty reward.

Whilst this may sound like an unusual and rather trivial approach to in-game currency, it works surprisingly well. Here, more than other games you quickly associate a real value with the Rupee. Something that makes it feel all the more rewarding when you uncover a stash of the shiny little fellas, and all the more painful when you loose a clutch through all too common miss-adventure.

As you get to grips with the common Rupee, the game opens out with a variety of tasks that involve the usual varied fare of action adventures: fetching and carrying, combat, dungeon exploration, and the obligatory boss battles. You can even start to build up your party with a bodyguard that can fight your battles for you and remove the danger of losing those precious Rupees. As you work your way through these tasks the theory is that you steadily accumulate Rupees, although in practice (unless you are very careful) the actual progress is more haphazard. Eventually you will have enough built up to gain access to more of the map. This again involves an amount of guesswork as nowhere is it stated how much is actually required. All you can do is suck it and see. As you progress, an edifice also rises up out of the central lake that once tall enough promises to grant access to Rupeeland and of course your wildest dreams.

As is often true of adventures, this game's achievement rests on the success of its facade. Does it provide a world that is convincing and engaging enough to be a meaningful place to explore? For us the answer is a resounding yes. Although much of its tricks have been seen before, the quality of the execution just makes you always want to pick it up for one more play. Rupeeland succeeds because of its massive personality which it wears firmly on its sleeve. In a similar way to the WarioWare games, Rupeeland presents a distinct and slightly wacky reality that is eminently appealing. From the Green and Red clad hero to the extended cast of lovable odd-balls and kooky kids, this is a game that goes on giving.

Once you have pushed through the steep learning curve of the Rupee bartering, and established your love and understanding of this fabled currency, then there is a classic game waiting for you here. This is a game that somehow combines the detailed adventures of yesteryear with the post-modern meanderings of WarioWare. The combination is one that should be a complete mess, but for some strange reason works really rather well.

81%

By Paul Govan

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  1. ? Unregistered 9 months ago

    awsome review!