1000 Tiny Claws Review

   Arr, I be doin' this 'hole review in me best pirate speek!!! Just kidding. It is tempting though.  How do you pronounce this game's title? Is it “One-thousand” Tiny Claws? Or “A Thousand” Tiny Claws? Personally, I've been saying “A Thousand,” but that may just be my South Jersey accent.

     In this game, you play as a sky pirate named Rana. Each level is a small island floating in the sky. You have pulled a cursed sword out of a stone, unleashing a horde of giant insects, and now you must use the sword to defeat the bugs and save the rest of your crew from execution. In order to do that, you must knock 5 waves of bugs off the edge of each island level before they knock you off.

     From an isometric view, you must hit the bugs with your sword toward an edge to knock them off. If they attack you, you get bumped toward the edge. The more something gets hit, be it an enemy or yourself, the further they fly when hit (is this how Smash Brothers works? I've never understood that game). If you get hit just a bit off the edge, you will grab on and have to mash X to pull yourself back up.There are also some cool boss fights that use different mechanics, which I won't discuss too much since they are pretty cool and there are only a handful of them.

     You move with the d-pad, X is swing your sword. Holding down the direction button that corresponds with the way you are facing and mashing X makes you do a stationary combo that finishes with an attack that splashes out to a slightly bigger area than normal (protip- you are invincible during some parts of the animation of this attack). Double tapping a direction makes you run that way, and if you press X while running you will stop and perform a powerful rush attack. When you hit enemies, you build up a sword meter on the side of the screen. If it fills up, you can hold down square to charge up a big attack that kills everything in a 45 degree arc in front of you and a small circle around you. O is block. If you press a direction while blocking, you'll hop around quickly while continuing to block.

     You face many types of bugs, each with unique characteristics. Some are small and try to swarm you at an angle, others are big and shoot fireballs at you. There is one that spawns more basic enemies and one that goes beserk and runs at you when it sees you (and a bunch more unique types). Hitting big bugs a few times usually flips them on their back, where they will stay for a good while. When they are like this, you can hit them across the stage, taking out big swaths of other bugs if they are in the way. There are also crates that drop into the level at set intervals that do the same thing. This makes for cool moments where you can charge right into huge crowds of enemies because you know you are about to flip a big enemy and send it flying through the crowd.

     There are also a few different types of terrain you'll be fighting on. Some places have many obstacles that bugs will bounce off of when hit. Sometimes these obstacles are placed in sections where you would want to hit bugs off the stage, making bugs bounce right back at you rather than leaving. A lot of later levels also feature collapsing terrain that leave holes in the map as the level progresses. The levels get pretty challenging pretty quickly as the game is not afraid to throw very large crowds of bugs at you. You have to concentrate and not make too many mistakes to be successful. There are 25 story mode stages. Each takes just a few minutes to run through, although you will probably need to restart quite a few of them.

     A typical level usually throws a nice mix of enemy types at you. You might be fighting off a big horde of small enemies in one round, then a mix of big and small, then a horde with a few specialists harassing you. For most of the story mode I just used the basic attack, although the post game content will teach you how to use all the other moves efficiently.

     That post-game content includes a challenge mode and a survival mode. Challenge mode features some really cool challenge types, such as a mode where you must kill as many enemies as possible but you start out with very low defense, so you go flying very far if hit, a hyper boss mode, where you fight stronger versions of the game's bosses, and a mode where you must hit enemies through a soccer-like goal. Most of the other challenges are a bit too frustrating to be fun, and even the fun ones have the difficulty cranked up a little too high. I almost gave up several times before finally completing all the challenges. You will learn how to use all of the different attacks and techniques in this mode though as you need to experiment with different strategies to figure out what works best in each challenge. Playing story mode after completing challenge mode is a bit of an eye-opener, as the story mode levels are much easier once you learn more advanced strategies in challenge mode. Survival mode has you facing unlimited bugs until you die. It's fun to play around with for a few minutes, but once I got the in-game trophies related to it, I called it quits.

     Completing these different modes earns you in-game trophies and pages to the ship's log, which is written as a quite funny dialogue between the ship's captain and Rana as they comment on various things about the game. Acutally, about 99% of the game's writing in the short cutscenes, loading screens, and in these unlockable pages is really great and funny.

     Character and sprite design is likewise very well done. The many types of bugs look great, as do the huge bosses and the weird pirates. Like many minis, some of the menus are grainy when played on PS3, but fortunately the actualy levels look good. The music is mostly good. Some of it isn't that memorable. The title screen music is downright grating after the first few times you hear it. Other tracks sound like they are straight out of a Mega Man game which suits the game's action well. The pirate shanty lyrics during the credits are pretty cool too.

      There is something a little off about the game though. It's not quite engaging enough to merit the amount of dedication it takes to beat some of the harder stages. I think there needed to be a few extra moves for your character to do or character progression or some other element to really hold your interest. Instead a lot of levels feel the same as you just mash X to hit bugs. So much in the game is really well done, and my rat's off the developers. But the samey-ness of the levels and the amount of restarts neeeded in these samey levels really drags the experience down. That's why 1000 Tiny Claws is a Mediocre Game, Tier 1.