Toejam & Earl: Panic on Funkotron
System: Playstation 3 (Version Played), Xbox 360, Sega Megadrive
Price: £3.69, 400MS Points
Toejam and Earl are best known for their first self-titled game and for good reasons as well. It was unique, it was funny, it had a strange art style and something we rarely saw back then: randomly generated maps and items. The game was well received and a sequel was inevitable. That game was Toejam & Earl: Panic on Funkotron. Did this game match the funkiness of the original? Or was it just a total bummer? Let’s find out.
Story:
The game takes place after the original game. After escaping from earth and returning home, they find out that their planet (Funkotron) has been invaded by earthlings that hid in Toejam and Earl’s ship. Toejam and Earl decide to capture the humans in jars (yes, jars) and send the humans back home. Because of this invasion, the Great Funkapotamus Lamont has gone missing and all funk are leaving their home planet! Toejam & Earl have to find his favourite stuff to lure him back to his throne.
Overall, the story is very basic as far as games go but it’s still quite enjoyable as one of the best things in this game was interacting with the other residents of the planet, as the conversations were most of the time very funny. It’s also necessary to interact with the resident to find out where Lamont's favourite items are, thus improving what could be a very tedious task. The ending is well worth it.
Story – 4/5 Basic, but very enjoyable thanks to the colourful cast of characters.
With all that said, however, a good enjoyable story does not always equal a good game so let’s have a look at:
Gameplay:
Instead of the original dungeon crawler type game, this game is your typical platformer (it wasn’t meant to be like this, the original TJ&E2 got denied by SEGA, look it up!). You can play as either Toejam or Earl, each having benefits over the other. For example, Toejam is faster than Earl while Earl has more health, but the way they control is exactly the same. In each level your main objective is to catch all the humans to be able to proceed onto the next level and later on to find Lamont's favourite stuff so all funk returns back to the planet, however this is optional.
You have 5 methods of attack, first is the normal attack with makes the duo throw a jar at enemies (if the enemy is slightly above you TJ or Earl will actually throw it at an angle which is super helpful in certain situations). Each enemy takes a certain amount of hits to capture; once they are in a jar, you have a limited time to pick them up which will give you points. If you fail to pick them up, the enemy will escape with all their health restored.
Your other two basic attacks are dropping jars straight down while in mid-air, which is useful on small platforms where the enemy does not have much room to manoeuvre. Your last basic attack is placing jars on the floor. I found this attack to be extremely useless as most enemies just run through them even though the game told me that it will explode when the enemy comes in contact with them.
Your other 2 more powerful attacks are the Panic button and the Funk Vac, these items are obtained by finding presents in trees (more on this later) or randomly scattered around the level (these presents grow legs and run off though). The Panic Button puts the character into a panic and then starts running around, scattering jars in rapid succession and causing multiple enemies to be captured at the same time. The Funk Vac is more rare to come across but it instantly absorbs everything on screen and instantly jars them.
Your other 2 abilities includes Funk Scan, which you will use to mostly find hidden doorways, presents in trees and more importantly humans that may be hiding in trees. It will also alert you to objects that can damage you in trees which are easily avoided. However, each time you use this it uses up 1 of your funk, which at one point in the game resulted in me just searching every tree and bush in the game without it, as the handy radar will tell you if there is a human nearby anyway. If you can’t see any humans on screen they are most likely in a tree. You will most likely be using the Funk Scan to find hidden doors but sometimes the landscape clearly shows you where it is. Your final ability is the funk move which lets you teleport through walls; this is all I found it useful for as I never used it in any other situation.
As you may have guessed by now, exploration is greatly encouraged in this game. Doing so will result in you finding trees with up to five different presents in them or finding a hidden door which will lead to a secret area that have a lot of presents in it or, even better, finding a funk orb which will give Toejam or Earl a power up for the entire level such as unlimited funk, double items from presents etc. You can also use coins to make hidden platforms or bubbles appear so you can reach higher places; sometimes it’s so you can make one of the other characters appear to participate in a Simon says type game. Doing well will increase your 'funk' or your points. I’m generally awful at the copy-the-actions type games but I’m sure other people will find it enjoyable. Special stages will sometimes appear if you explore enough, going into these gives you a chance to rack up points or items; however these stages are very hard, as obstacles appear too fast for you to react so you will most likely avoid them like I did.
Toejam and Earl control smoothly; their momentum is just right and I really can’t fault anything about how they control. However there are certain parts where you have to jump on trampoline-type platforms, this is where the controls become awkward. Firstly, it takes far too long to get a decent amount of height in your jump and when you do, moving left or right will cause Toejam or Earl to flip with WAY too much momentum. This is frustrating because if you land on anything but your feet or stomach you have to do the entire jumping sequence again. However there are always bubbles floating above trampoline platforms which is useful as it shows you where the area of the trampoline is. Swimming controls are very responsive, except trying to float straight down take’s far too long and will most likely always be the cause of you drowning.
Enemies are very diverse; there are tourists who stun you when they take a picture, poodles who normally attack if you capture their mother (they attack even if they’re on their own) and an opera singer in a box. However you’ll find yourself overwhelmed by enemies a lot or sometimes in an area where you can’t avoid their attacks because you can’t jump over them. I found myself dying a lot because there is no hit recovery, so I would get stuck between two enemies with no chance of escape. Thankfully after you die enemies you caught before your death are still captured (unless you lost all your lives, in that case its back to the beginning for you!).
A major problem I had with this games were the leaps of faith, normally I don’t mind these if its only once or twice, but it always happens in this game, even if you’re trying to go up. It’s always a guessing game climbing up and hoping a platform will appear and catch you, if you guess wrong you will have to repeat (most of the time) the tedious process of getting all the way back there just to guess again. It’s not as frustrating when it’s not as tedious to get back where you were, but there are parts where you will land in either fire that drains your health very quickly or water where you need to swim quite a while to get back to where you were.
The game is very generous with points. You need 10,000 points for an extra life and if you’re like me you will most likely look in every tree and explore every inch of the map for hidden goodies. Most of the goodies you find are points and some enemies give quite a large amount of points considering how easy some of them are to capture.
Gameplay – 3/5 Passable if you can ignore the leaps of faith and unfair enemy ambushes due to the lack of hit recovery.
Graphics:
This is where the game falls flat on its face. At first I thought the game was quite colourful, levels were very well designed and the sprites of Toejam, Earl and the other characters were pleasant to look at. But after 6 levels, you realise that the levels are recycled. For example, you just finished your first snow level, 3 levels later you realise you are on another snow level and that the 3 levels before it had similar themes to stages you have already played. The only time you get to see something different is the third to last level which takes place on the moon. But this is the only time you see it. After you go into the caves you will avoid any other cave like the plague, the caves have a foreground which makes it very difficult to see yourself as well as any obstacles you want to avoid.
Graphics – 2/5 Quite nice at first until you realise they are recycling themes of previous stages. If the sprites weren’t so smooth this would have most likely got 1/5.
(see next post for Music and Summary!)
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