Quick Look: The Last Tinker: City of Colors

This game came out a while ago, and I saw it played on a charity stream. Seems like a decent game but way too hard for the children it's targeting with the colors and themes of racial harmony.

I am dying laughing over here. I hope more people read yours and my comments. Seriously, stick to it folks, the mushroom bit is SO GOOD.

Unity is indeed not very optimised for high end rendering without some heavy rendering pipeline modification, particularly with high polygon counts... (Unity 5 promises to address this)

But yeah, this game could probably have been better optimised as well... the draw distance seems a bit large for what the game needs, and some of the particles / effects are also very high res, which could be eating up the CPU/GPU... I also notice that they are using the built in toon-outline shader in a fair few assets, which literally doubles the polygon count on some of those models... still you'd think the ps4 it should handle it ok...

Who knows...

All in all it looks nice... if a bit overdone... maybe trying too hard for the LBP / arts&crafts / feel-good look...

But yeah, parts of the world look kind of nice.

IS this one of those Journey to The West things again? I see the tail in the loading screen and hes a monkey. You know China has other myths right?

The art style is colorful and vibrant and all, but it also looks like someone vomited whimsical textures all over the damn place. It seems a bit much.

Mr Show reference happens before Dota. As it should be.

I was curious about this when I saw it on the store earlier. It seems cool ,but the bad framerate puts me off. I'll wait until it's on a sale or something, £18 seems a little much.

The hell.......?

actually laughing out loud at the quick look of jeff making noises

hahaha didn't laugh so hard for a long time, thanks guys

When Jeff commits, Jeff COMMITS.

Damn, I was excited when they said this was a 3D platformer but its just an AC/Uncharted like "Hold forward on the stick" adventure game.

Well that is some awful framerate issues there. And this game looks hella boring too. Love the art direction and it seems like the intentions are good, but not a single mechanic shown here looks fun. Sometimes it's better to double down on a single mechanic and really make it work, especially when you have a small team. This just looks like a game killed by its own ambition. Every element seems half baked, a case where instead of doing one thing really well they did a bunch of things just okay.

I'm getting some serious Psychonauts-vibes here, especially with that guitar music.

@jacdg: well, it is not a good 3d platformer, it is a decent mix of auto traversal assassin's creed style, very light batman combat, but most of all, it tackles some pretty dark topics in a way that is very interesting and approachable for kids.

I tested it for a french site I co-run and I liked it, but the gameplay is not the main draw here, the art and story are. Also, I played it on PC, very solid frame rate the whole way, so i have no idea how this is so bad on PS4.

link to the preview, and quick score I added after finishing the game, feel free to google translate:

http://gamersflag.com/article/apercu-the-last-tinker-city-of-colors

http://gamersflag.com/article/the-last-tinker-impressions-sur-le-jeu-final

@jeff It probably came to PS4 first because Unity for PS4 was released back on June 16th, while the "public preview" of Unity for XB1 was just released on August 11th.

The performance issues could be due to a number of reasons. The initial release of Unity for PS4 might not be completely optimized yet, and/or the developer may have not done any optimizing for the PS4.

I like the look of this game...if it were like a $5-10 downloadable I'd consider busting through this after work to relax.. but still, looks really clunky...but that part is funny... I don't know.

It really is drugachussetts.

You rang?

Forget it Jeff, it's Colortown...

Yeah, this game looks ugly. Throwing tie-dyed colors on everything ruins it; it just looks lazy.

Man, anyone remember Rayman 2: Revolution? That platformer was all kinds of awesome and amazing (from the perspective of young me, anyway). This doesn't look as great.

I don't think I could make it far in this game.

So this is Assassin's Creed for kids? Uh, okay then.

By the way Jeff if you can't jump it isn't a platformer. Pretty crazy that this was initially called one early on, gave me totally the wrong idea.

@yurimegumi said:

You rang?

I wish I could favorite comments.

@brad: I'm a bit surprised that he's not the video thumbnail.

Well that made my day.

Oh man Jeff had me laughing my fucking balls off doing mushroom VO.

Yeah, I really did hate that stealth part at the beginning of Wind Waker.

Man, I feel like this game really wants me to like it. Can I just pay them the $20 for the soundtrack?

I'm with Brad here... this was so hard to make it all the way through.

Breadcumb trail = bad level design

Any of you guys ever play Haunting Ground?

I like this game a lot better than the GB guys but maybe I just needed something easy to pick up and play for a little bit to give me a break from the 'serious' stuff I usually play and since there hasn't been a new Ratchet and Clank in a while I needed something that sort of scratches that itch. Is there anything out there that's like Ratchet or Jak that's on PC. I only own a PS4 and gaming computer. Thanks duders in advance

I was on board until that stealth section. Now I'll spend my money elsewhere.

Glad Jeff saw the similarities between this and Drugachusetts. Its the first thing I thought of when I saw the visuals.

I'm not a big graphics person, but performance is important and the framerate here makes this game almost unwatchable/unplayable. This is just inexcusable. It's too bad, because otherwise the game has some interesting things going on.

I was promised a platformer, Jeff! This is no platformer!

Jeff is seriously one of the funniest dudes I know of. I was fucking dying along with Brad when Jeff was doing Mushroom voice over and a few other comments he made. Haven't heard Brad lose it quite that much in a while.

I was thinking the same thing. Surprised @Brad didn't make the connection.

Surprised they haven't had to change the title in the UK and Ireland - 'tinker' is a fairly offensive term with a similar meaning to 'gypsy'.

Is this real life?

The area they stop at at the end reminds me of the training area from the first Thief game :D except they made it shitty

It's not just any quick look that nearly puts me to sleep!

@whitegreyblack: I agree. I feel that if I look at it for too long I might get a migraine.

This game is obviously a kid friendly interpretation of being a drug dealer in the hood.

So I own this game and played it through. The frame rate actually looks fine. This video actually looks like it was recorded with really shitty frame rate...Whats up with your video player?

There's no reason this game can't be running at 60fps on a ps4. I get that they need to get it out and make money but I won't buy it simply because of that. I'd consider it on my PC but always end up just launching Dota. XD

The color palette is a little harsh on this one. It's hard to tell environment from actors in it. Mechanics look solid enough, but the aesthetic is a down-payment on an aneurysm.