Toki Tori 2 review: Not for birdbrains

Despite the decade plus between the first and second Toki Tori games, Two Tribes's Wii U (and soon PC) evolution of the Game Boy Color game is striking. The 2001 puzzle-platformer was neat, charming, and challenging. Its compact levels and tool-contextual actions evoked Lemmings, albeit with the micromanagement filtered out. You controlled a dopey-looking bird in blocky 2D platform levels, making him manipulate his environment to open up paths to progress. This simplicity, however, was negated by some very specific solutions. It was, and still is, a likable little puzzler.

What's clever about Toki Tori 2 is how it doesn't deviate from that ethos, and yet it feels like a completely different game. If anything, its evolution of the first game's principles is to make them simpler, yet the result is something much more complex. It's weird, because there's a pungent minimalism about Toki Tori 2, but it's this minimalism that branches out in so many ways through the environment, and the result is distinct and, more than anything, clever. The reason it all works is because Toki Tori 2, with all its environmental nuances, makes you want to be as intelligent as it is.

Gallery: Toki Tori 2 (3/14/13)

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Toki Tori 2 review: Not for birdbrains originally appeared on Joystiq on Mon, 15 Apr 2013 13:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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