Despite being a sucker for 3D platformer games, I cannot recommend this game to anyone at all. From a glance it looks like fairly decent platformer mixed with some intense shooting action but instead it's a frustratingly flawed piece of garbage. I'll list off some good and bad points. I'll also try and not compare this game to Jet Force Gemini too much because I don't think it's all that fair to make comparisons between two different games and judge it for not living up to that expectation, but it'll be hard not to since there are quite a few similarities, almost straight rips from JFG even.
The plot of the game is that you and your Tamarin family of four are living happily in your forest like any other day. Until the Insekt army begins their conquest of the world and expansion of their Queendom and your family is separated and captured. Now it's your job to go out and rescue them while fighting through hordes of ants and along the way must rescue birds and collect Fireflies to advance further. Now the game is split up into two sections. The exploration platforming section, and the combat section. You won't always have your weapons with you because as the game will tell you, they're too heavy to jump around with. So you'll have set worlds where you can explore and jump around while collecting Fireflies and levels where you fight the ants while rescuing birds.
Alright good points first.
*Graphics
The graphics are aesthetically pleasing and combined with the ambiance it's rather relaxing.
*Soundtrack
While the music isn't really out of this world it's easy on the ears. The exploration music fits the atmosphere and the combat music is pretty good and fits the tension.
Okay now the bad points.
*Plot
The story of the game is pretty bare bones. Peaceful life is ruined by bad guys and now you must go save your loved ones. That alone is sums up the whole plot right there. The Insekt army shows up, you go around a few levels grabbing Fireflies to advance further and rescue your family one by one and then the credits roll. No special ending or anything. As soon as you save the last member the invasion is over. At least you assume it's over because it ends with just you and your family playing and relaxing at home. I guess the ants just decided to leave after losing their last prisoner. And that's really it. There's no special characters you meet apart from the hedgehog who helps you out every now and then, no in depth lore on the world around you, no explanation about the Insekt army with their society, structure and origin. Only that they're just expanding their Queendom and consuming resources and it's ruled by two queens who don't even have proper roles in the game like you'd think they would. They're spoken of only once and you see them only once at the very end of the game. They also don't serve as the final bosses, in fact there are no bosses. Instead the queens only serve as obstacles blocking a switch for a cell door that has one your family members inside. Yeah I was really disappointed lol.
*Controls
At first the controls seem okay. Movement is alright, so far so good. Until you have to start jumping or fighting, you know, the main things in the game you're supposed to do. I'll start with the platforming part. You can barely control your jumps in mid-air which makes precision platforming frustrating. It's almost like you have a set jumping path that you have to fight every time you want make a certain jump. And if you do manage to fight it, you undershoot your jumps and fall to your death. Now the combat part is where I think the game fails the most. Your worst enemy isn't the Insekt army no, your worst enemy and greatest challenge are the controls for shooting. Let me explain. While in shooting mode you're limited to just normal not so high jumping so your primary focus is on shooting. In order to shoot, you have to hold down the left trigger to bring up the cursor. You then use the right thumb stick to aim the cursor around and pull the right trigger to shoot. Sounds easy enough right? Well every time you move, the aiming cursor resets to the center of the screen. And when you're getting shot at you kinda wanna keep moving while also fighting back. But if you want to do that you have to pick a fight with the aiming cursor first because it's a struggle to keep the cursor where you want to aim while it's constantly resetting to the center anytime you budge an inch and the control for it is very stiff. This is a major flaw in the game, especially for the part people look forward to the most. Jet Force Gemini had the same problem but the cursor was easier to control in that and much more manageable. The game even lets you lock on to enemies like snipers who are above you because the game itself knows that mechanic sucks. The only way you'll be able effectively fight is if you take your time, stand still and line up a single target. That or just frag them all with grenades but you don't get those until near the end of the game.
*Limited Weapons
There are only five weapons in the whole game: the Uzi which is just a pistol with a short burst of fire at the beginning of each shot, the machine gun, the rocket launcher, shurikens and grenades. Most of these weapons are situational, I found myself using the Uzi the most as well as the shurikens because they can destroy metal shields the ants carry like the ones from Jet Force Gemini. The machine gun is inaccurate and the rocket launcher you don't get until the very last level so I didn't get much use out of it except for special switches. The grenades are used for destroying wooden doors/walls mostly but they have their use in combat. The game is pretty short but it would've been nice to have more of an arsenal to choose from.
*Firefly Glitch
You need to catch Fireflies in order to open doors to advance further in the game like Power Stars and Jigsaw Pieces. But in order to grab a Firefly you have to lock onto it and jump at it. Kinda stupid by itself really, why can't you just walk into it to grab it? Anyway, there were several times when I found a Firefly, locked onto it and jumped only to pass through it. I could never get it no matter how many times I tried unless I left the world entirely and came back to it. This was infuriating especially when you work hard to unlock it, like doing those stupid coin trail challenges, only to the have the game tell you that you simply can't have it even though you earned it. A problem that probably could've easily been fixed if you could just walk into it. There's also trying to save birds from execution but the game gives you barely enough time to get to them and kill the ants before they shoot them. There's also a glitch where after killing a certain number of ants, a small cut scene will play showing the door you just unlocked, but during this time the ants can still execute the birds so you're unable to do anything. I tried to 100% the game but because of these glitches I couldn't.
*Short Game
I have 9 hours on record but that's because I tried to 100% the game. But you can actually beat it in about 3-4 hours. Considering the price and just the overall idea of the game I didn't expect a long adventure but still that's rather short for a 3D platformer.
That's all I can really say about Tamarin. If you still want to give it a try, my advice would be to keep expectations low and wait for a sale to be just as low.
