TY the Tasmanian Tiger 2: Bush Rescue

Now the Aussie in me wants to give this game a perfect score simply for finally allowing our culture into the world of videogames (ok the first game did that but I've yet to play it as of this writing) alas while it is a fun game, it's far from perfect which pains me to admit.

The biggest issue here are the glitches, this is due to the game being very big for its time as the levels are very large and are filled with landmarks to make use of the large spaces they each have. As you can imagine, this makes the game very unstable on older hardware due to how much that needs to be rendered with the game even pausing to allow itself to render background environments during the driving stage. Thankfully this isn't an issue on modern hardware as those are able to render these environments with little hassle, however I do have bad memories of the game crashing on me due to my consoles inability to render one of the larger environments. The game is also somewhat derivative with its gameplay, borrowing elements from the likes of crash bandicoot, Spyro and sonic (which ironically all lost to our hero in his advertising campaign for his games) nothing is too egregious from any of them, however the assets do add up which makes this game unoriginal compared to those classics. For some reason, it also has a kart racing mode where ty can compete with other characters for money which are only required to beat for 100% completion, I don't know why this is here other than to remind players of crash team racing which this game does a terrible job in emulating. Finally, the voice acting is atrocious, with the exception of ty who gives in a solid performance, everybody is putting on a fake Australian accent despite the voice cast all being Australian. It's like if Chris Hemsworth was impersonating Brad Pitt who was in turn impersonating Paul Hogan, it just boggles the mind with what they were going for.

Those are the negatives out of the way, let's move on to the positives and what makes this game great despite its drawbacks. Despite me complaining that the gameplay is a hybrid of crash, Spyro and sonic, I can't deny that it's a ton of fun as running around at high speeds with weapons that are both ranged and melee collecting trinkets used to buy upgrades as well as exploring these vast landscapes for hidden items is immensely satisfying due to how well our hero controls. Said environments are vast without feeling too spacious which with the benefit of modern hardware, can be explored effortlessly without too much of a hiccup. The hidden collectibles may seem pointless at first, however they give you quite a bit of opals upon finding them as well as unlocking extra content once they're all found, making it worthwhile to find all of them. The game is on the easier side due to ty respawning at an outhouse that serves as a checkpoint whenever he dies, however these outhouses are fairly rare in each level and there are a ton of enemies to fight to ensure that he’s never too safe in these environments. A lot of the missions are a ton of fun as ty has to solve the issues of the members of the Australian outback but with a distinctly true-blue Australian attitude, that is, he puts on a brace face when talking to the citizens even though it's apparent he finds them frustrating due to the predicaments he has to solve for them. To give a few examples, there's a Hollywood film being shot in the outback that keeps asking for help only for ty to keep accidentally knocking out the extras rather than the enemies terrorising the set, there’s aliens getting stranded in rock formations that TY needs to rescue (said aliens having Australian accents) and one where he has to fix a woman's car with said woman being a complete Karen and ty even calling her out for her obnoxious attitude. This just shows what a good person our hero is at heart as he's willing to help out his fellow citizens even if they tend to visibly annoy him as people, although there's plenty of truly heroic acts that he accomplishes throughout the game as well including putting out bushfires, rescuing civilians from the henchmen of the main antagonist Cass and rescuing workers from dangerous environments including a volcano and dangerous cliffs.

I could go on with all the great things this game has to offer but I'll leave it at that, it has its flaws sure, however they tend to go away if you play this on modern hardware and the bad voice acting and awful Jeep controls don't take away from the experience too much.

After enjoying the first game so much I just had to check out the sequel and what can I say, it's everything I hoped for and more. There's now an open world to explore (with short loading zones between levels) with shops and stuff. The biggest change is arguably the inclusion of drivable vehicles, which adds a lot of variety to the gameplay and they handle surprisingly well (even the karts). The bunyips especially are a cool addition.

All the levels are huge (they feel even bigger than in the first one) and are fun to explore. The soundtrack is just magnificent and the game has just as much (if not even more) of that lovable Aussie charm to it.

Remaster wise it's pretty good, I feel like the game is running a lot smoother than the first one and I haven't had nearly as much trouble with the camera getting stuck. Unfortunately, there's some clipping on the character models (noticeable in cutscenes) but that's not really a big deal to me.