Well... this is a game in which you build big tornadoes and destroy cities. I bought it in the hope that it could be another take on Katamari style gaming, but overall I have to say this game just isn't that good.
Graphically it's very much like what you see from American TV cartoons these days. That's not so bad. Voice acting wasn't bad but all the same I wasn't fond of the way the main character spoke like a snarky American soldier though he's an alien. Maybe that's just me. I just find it to be a dispassionate and annoying style of speech. Still, it's what it's intended to be.
Gameplay: You start off as a little tornado, you run over stuff and build into a bigger tornado. Not so bad. Then you do these little gate-run sequences (called a Vortex Race), followed by a boss battle (Totem Battle).
The main portion of each mission is the level - where you grow your tornado and collect "fire fliers".
My issues with the main game:
1) Camera angles. It's either almost-overhead when you are a small tornado, and from directly behind when you are big. I don't know, maybe they don't want you to see what you're doing due to limitations with draw distances, but I always felt that I was being hindered by not really being able to see what I was running over. I also felt lost due to not being able to see enough to get a feeling from where I was in the overall landscape. I wished I could tilt the vertical camera axis just a little or somehow get a view from further away. Especially when in a hurry to return to base.
2) Certain objects on levels contain these little orange flames called Fire Fliers which you have to collect to complete the level. There are 100 but you only need to collect 50 and go back to base. Collecting of fire fliers makes the game's speed uneven and clunky. You press right trigger to suck them in and hold it as you run over more things containing fire fliers to keep up the combo. Keeping up the combo adds seconds to the game level timer. Problem is... they give you a minor speed boost (for a split second) then you get gradually slower and slower as you run out of their power. So if you try for big combos, it's really irritating as you constantly feel like you're running out and powerless to do any better, and when you are feeling against the time it seems counterintuitive to combo things to make you ever slower when you're in a hurry. It just made the game feel almost suffocating at times.
3) I didn't feel like the objects on each stage were done evenly. Objects that appeared like they would be quickly uprooted in a tornado stuck strong, beyond other objects that would remain on the ground until you were the next level in size. So you have to play and replay relying on memory rather than intuition.
The other portions of the game:
"Vortex races" seem familiar from somewhere - an old Sonic The Hedgehog game, maybe? I am not sure. They aren't really races, you pass through gates in front of you as you fly forwards, and I don't know, maybe it's just me but I found it almost impossible to get worse than a gold medal for each race. I had to force myself into a silver medal to get an Xbox achievement. These sequences were much less difficult than the rest of the game.
The boss battles themselves weren't so interesting, but the getting to each boss was the interesting part, usually using a new move to help you. The battles themselves are usually a case of [wait for the visual clue] [push a direction] [hammer a button] until done. I felt that they could have done with more variety.
Not a bad game as such, but overall I found it quite annoying and joyless to play. I only finished it because I felt I ought to, having started it.
Maybe if you have an 6 year old son that wants to play Call Of Duty you can give him this instead, since it's all kiddy-style war-glory soldier stories... I don't know who else could really truly appreciate this game.
