Welcome to our review of ToeJam & Earl: Back in the Groove, out tomorrow on Nintendo Switch and other platforms.
ToeJam and Earl have crash-landed back on Earth in ToeJam & Earl: Back in the Groove!, a funky fresh roguelike adventure infused with old skool hip-hop and jam-packed with awesome throwbacks to the 1991 classic. Original Funk Lord (and co-creator) Greg Johnson is back at the helm with the sequel that ToeJam and Earl fans have been waiting for!
The iconic ‘90s duo is back in the groove with all-new presents to help them navigate this wack planet “”Earth”” and retrieve all the lost pieces to the Rapmaster Rocket. Team up for co-op play to discover secret locations, hidden presents, and new friends as you make your way through a constantly changing and unpredictable world!
ToeJam & Earl: Back in the Groove! is a mash-up of the very best features of the classic console games with a ton of fresh improvements. Grab some homies and get ready for a blast of funky nostalgia as you help ToeJam and Earl return once again to Funkotron.
ToeJam & Earl: Back in the Groove! is a highly anticipated eShop game and it has some high expectations to live up to, same for me, I went in expecting a lot. I was disappointed but just because I was expecting “more” out of this game.
So I started with the tutorial which is basically the easy intro to the game. In this tutorial, you are shown hints and clues and are being hand guided into the storyline. Get all presents, find all food in case enemies damage you and most important of all, find the missing pieces of your space ship! This is how the initial game starts.
Stuck on interdimensional islands, you need to find the goods and then proceed to the next island by entering the right elevator, the wrong one will take you back one floor, the right one takes you upwards! Often you will find these trippy portals into a sort of runner style game, a lot of variety!
Enemies can get quite annoying as they seem to hone in on you in a preset area, so you can use your speed to get out of harm’s way or jump into the water or even purposely jump down a cliff. Enemies don’t really do a lot of damage at the beginning, but it does help to keep your eyes out on the health meter. I had plenty of lives and health at all time, but I was being cautious.
While this game is not the worst or even bad, I just could not get into it. The controls often felt like they were brought back from the early 90s just to move your characters around. The upside to this, however, is that you will not easily fall off of a cliff, it balances you on the ledge first during which you can still turn around.
Graphics wise, this is what you’d expect of this title. Some animations might be a little smoother at times, but it is nothing too annoying. The real annoying part of this game, the waiting time between levels/islands. It is just a tad too long and it feels too much after just a few drops to lower levels. Especially since you need to climb all those levels again and every time got the waiting game to play…
In conclusion, ToeJam & Earl: Back in the Groove! is not a bad game, I just had higher expectations and with the waiting in between levels, it left a bit of a bad aftertaste, like it could not make up for the lack of energy there often is when playing.
But despite some harsh criticism, still giving it a 6,5 out of 10.
