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Product: Ice Age: Scrat’s Nutty Adventure [Nintendo Switch]
Price: £32.99
Age Range: 7+
Manufacturer’s Description: Join Scrat’s quest for the Crystal Nuts Ice Age’s favorite sabre-tooth squirrel, Scrat, is at it again in an all-new adventure! A mysterious mechanism in an ancient Scratazon Temple, has locked away his prized possession –and the only way to get it back is an epic quest to find four legendary Crystal Nuts, scattered across the land. It’s up to you to guide Scrat through a hilarious 3D action-adventure, where you’ll face fierce prehistoric creatures, survive crazy calamities, and return the missing relics to their rightful home.
Rating: (4/5 stars) Review: Ice Age: Scrat’s Nutty Adventure is the latest game from Outright Games, who create family games featuring well known characters – their other games include Paw Patrol and Dreamworks Dragons, both of which Lydia really enjoys. This new game features the daft but lovable sabre-tooth squirrel Scrat from Ice Age, as he explores the world in search of the mysterious Crystal Nuts. Scrat’s Nutty Adventure is a 3D action adventure game with platforming and basic puzzle solving. You control Scrat as he runs and jumps around the world, collecting crystals and fighting bugs. Scrat has two ways to defend himself; he can either attack in squirrel-to-bug combat, or throw rocks from a distance. Some of the ‘baddies’, as Lydia calls them, can attack from a distance as well so you can’t just stand still and throw rocks at everything without being at risk of being hurt. The game begins with Scrat accidentally discovering a hidden temple, where he finds out about the legend of the Crystal Nuts. Once you leave the temple, you can begin to explore the world and follow the path that is accessible to you. The world is split up into four sections, with each path full of obstacles to overcome and ending with a crystal nut. After collecting a nut and returning it to the temple, you gain a new skill which then makes another of the paths accessible to you. In addition to the crystals and the crystal nuts, there are shards and statues to collect in each area of the game. These are hidden in hard to reach places, and often rather disgustingly in piles of dung… much to Lydia’s amusement. As you travel through the game, you activate checkpoints fairly frequently, where you regenerate if you run out of health. Scrat takes damage from the attacking bugs or from falling into water – although he does bounce when he hits the water which gives you a chance to get back on dry land if you have enough health. Each path goes through several stages, each of which has a special checkpoint at the beginning, which you can stand on to activate the map, allowing you to fast travel to any of the active map checkpoints. You can also check your progress with the map, including checking how many collectibles you have found for each stage. The game controls are fairly standard, you just have to get used to which buttons control the attack and jump actions. Lydia played the game for around an hour on her first play through, and definitely got used to the controls and the game by the end of that time. As well as chunks of rock and ice to jump around on, there are moving platforms, climbing walls and wall-to-wall jumps to contend with, all of which Lydia has pretty much got the hang of now. There are a few parts of the game that will challenge younger players like Lydia – she’s had to have a bit of parental help on the trickier jumps; those with small platforms or where timing is important. Overall we are pretty pleased with this game. In some areas the graphics do let it down – a couple of textures here and there do seem quite pixelated or blurry, and the map is oddly low quality too. However, it is really fun to play and a good game for younger players. Fans of the films will enjoy exploring the familiar landscape with Scrat, and collecting the statues of the characters. We give Ice Age: Scrat’s Nutty Adventure 4 stars. Follow us on twitch for more family gaming!
