{"id":102245,"date":"2019-10-21T19:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-10-21T19:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nintendolife.com\/reviews\/nintendo-switch\/ice_age_scrats_nutty_adventure1"},"modified":"2019-10-21T19:00:00","modified_gmt":"2019-10-21T19:00:00","slug":"review-ice-age-scrats-nutty-adventure-youd-have-to-be-off-your-nut-to-play-this","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/2019\/10\/21\/review-ice-age-scrats-nutty-adventure-youd-have-to-be-off-your-nut-to-play-this\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: Ice Age: Scrat&#8217;s Nutty Adventure &#8211; You&#8217;d Have To Be Off Your Nut To Play This"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"media_block\"><a href=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/5495c8dafb091\/large.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/5495c8dafb091\/small.jpg\" class=\"media_thumbnail\"><\/a><\/div>\n<div id>\n<aside class=\"picture embed\"><a title=\"Ice Age: Scrat's Nutty Adventure Review - Screenshot 1 of 3\" href=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/screenshots\/100383\/large.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/screenshots\/100383\/900x.jpg\" alt=\"Ice Age: Scrat's Nutty Adventure Review - Screenshot 1 of 3\"><\/a><\/aside>\n<p>Wow, there\u2019s just no stopping <strong>Ice Age<\/strong>, is there? Just like The Pleistocene, 20th Century Fox\u2019s (or Disney\u2019s now, we guess) animated juggernaut has been relentless since the release of the first movie back in 2002, with a total of five cinematic releases, a host of short films and TV shows, and a plethora of console and online games. Despite harsh critical reception towards the latest movie, it still made a mammoth (ha!) amount of money, and so the wheels keep turning. <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nintendolife.com\/games\/nintendo-switch\/ice_age_scrats_nutty_adventure1\">Ice Age: Scrat\u2019s Nutty Adventure<\/a><\/strong> is the latest game in the franchise, starring everyone\u2019s favourite sabre-toothed squirrel in a quest to find the four legendary Crystal Nuts \u2013 <em>hey, quiet in the back!<\/em><\/p>\n<p>We\u2019ll just come right out and say it: <em>this isn\u2019t a good game<\/em>. It\u2019s an incredibly mundane platformer that\u2019s completely devoid of any originality or challenge. What\u2019s more, the performance of the game on Switch is <em>really<\/em> rough in comparison to other platforms, with a shocking frame rate and bland visuals. But what\u2019s so frustrating is that there\u2019s heaps of potential here for it to be a <em>great<\/em> game \u2013 there&#8217;s some excellent level design on display, for example \u2013 but it\u2019s clear the developers just settled for \u2018good enough\u2019 for the most part.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"picture embed\"><a title=\"Ice Age: Scrat's Nutty Adventure Review - Screenshot 2 of 3\" href=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/screenshots\/100382\/large.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/screenshots\/100382\/900x.jpg\" alt=\"Ice Age: Scrat's Nutty Adventure Review - Screenshot 2 of 3\"><\/a><\/aside>\n<p>Once again, the lovable Scrat is on a needlessly dangerous quest to recover his precious acorn after dropping it into the mystical Scratazon Temple. The temple mistakes the acorn as an offering, and activates the four Crystal Nuts. And so, to retrieve his acorn, Scrat heads out to four distinct locations to find the Crystal Nuts and return them to the temple. The plot is about as deep as you\u2019d expect from a licensed title, but we have to admit that bringing Scrat back as the main protagonist was probably the best decision the developers could have made; he\u2019s everyone\u2019s favourite character for a reason. On the flip side, the distinct lack of any other characters makes this a very lonely game \u2013 and not in a good way, like <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nintendolife.com\/games\/nes\/metroid\">Metroid<\/a><\/strong>. There\u2019s <em>no one<\/em> to talk to throughout the experience, and the plot never deviates from the \u2018go here, retrieve this, and come back\u2019 task that\u2019s been handed to you.<\/p>\n<p>Controlling Scrat is very similar to how he played in 2006\u2019s <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nintendolife.com\/games\/ds\/ice_age_2_the_meltdown\">Ice Age 2: The Meltdown<\/a><\/strong> (which gives you an idea of how unambitious this title is) \u2013 he can jump, roll around, throw objects, and unleash a few nifty kung-fu moves against his enemies. As you defeat the region bosses and gather the Crystal Nuts, new abilities such as a double jump will be granted to you, with subsequent regions altering their layout accordingly to allow adequate use of these abilities. Naturally, Scrat doesn\u2019t talk, and is limited to manic fits of giggling and screams of fear as he traverses the land (and the squeal of relief he emits when collecting a health pickup is, er\u2026 <em>troubling<\/em>).<\/p>\n<aside class=\"picture embed\"><a title=\"Ice Age: Scrat's Nutty Adventure Review - Screenshot 3 of 3\" href=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/screenshots\/100377\/large.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/screenshots\/100377\/900x.jpg\" alt=\"Ice Age: Scrat's Nutty Adventure Review - Screenshot 3 of 3\"><\/a><\/aside>\n<p>The levels themselves are the highlight of the game. They\u2019re really quite well designed, giving a <em>sense<\/em> of an open-world whilst remaining entirely linear. You\u2019ll start off in a fairly idyllic countryside setting before moving onto snow-capped mountains and lakes full of lava. What you actually <em>do<\/em> in the levels is an entirely different story. You\u2019ll hop around collecting purple crystals (which unlock concept art in the main menu \u2013 though the game doesn\u2019t actually tell you this) and the occasional tablet or statue piece, defeating bugs and crabs along the way before moving onto the next area. That\u2019s about it. Oh, and there are locked doorways dotted around here and there requiring you to collect two keys (shaped like nuts, obviously) lying nearby. It\u2019s so repetitive, so by-the-numbers, that despite the game\u2019s short run time (you\u2019ll be done in about 3 or 4 hours), you\u2019ll feel like you\u2019ve seen everything there is to see after the very first region.<\/p>\n<p>Where the game <em>really<\/em> falls down is in its performance on Switch. It\u2019s <em>awful<\/em>. Whilst not the best-looking platformer on any console, it\u2019s clear that some downgrades were made in bringing it over to the Switch. Lighting effects are poor, textures are bland and muddy, and rock formations look like lumps of Play-Doh. Despite all this, the game <em>still<\/em> struggles to run adequately enough, with the frame rate chugging along at unacceptably low levels. Additionally, bugs will cause unnecessary deaths at various points in the game; we found ourselves clipping through platforms and getting stuck in walls whilst wall jumping.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div id=\"conclusion\">\n<h2 class=\"heading\">Conclusion<\/h2>\n<p>Instead of being a brand new platformer, Ice Age: Scrat\u2019s Nutty Adventure feels like a remaster of a game from the early 2000s, and not a very good one either. On the positive side, the level design is pretty good, with areas connecting to one another in a way that feels large-scale, but remains comfortably linear. Otherwise, Ice Age: Scrat\u2019s Nutty Adventure completely lacks challenge, is extremely repetitive and runs on the Switch about as well as Manny the Mammoth runs after gorging on a bunch of peaches. In short, it&#8217;s exactly what you\u2019d expect from a licensed game of this type.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Wow, there\u2019s just no stopping Ice Age, is there? Just like The Pleistocene, 20th Century Fox\u2019s (or Disney\u2019s now, we guess) animated juggernaut has been relentless since the release of the first movie back in 2002, with a total of five cinematic releases, a host of short films and TV shows, and a plethora of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-102245","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nintendo-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102245","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=102245"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102245\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=102245"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=102245"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=102245"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}