Tomba! Special Edition Review (PS5) | Push Square

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So, who remembers Tomba!? Also known as Tombi! in Europe, it was a distinctly Japanese platformer that charmed many a PS1 player all the way back in 1997. Often bizarre but almost always bright and cheery, Tomba! offered something very different to the genre's blockbusters, like Crash Bandicoot or Spyro. It was a curious blend of sprite-based, 2D platforming and layered 3D environments. It even had RPG elements.

The game always deserved another crack at finding a wider audience, and so we're delighted that Tomba! Special Edition exists. This is a port that comes equipped with a couple of key modern conveniences: the ability to save anywhere, and a rewind option. In the original release, saving could only be done at signposts scattered throughout the title's interconnected environments, and actually finding them could become something of a chore — especially if you were in a rush to set the controller down.

Needless to say, these new features can spare you from a lot of potential frustration. Tomba! isn't a particularly hard game, but it can be surprisingly tricky — and a little tedious at times. As mentioned, the adventure is set across a web of interconnected areas, and so there's quite a bit of backtracking in order to access previously unreachable locations, or to finish off a quest.

Yep, Tomba!'s got quests. The pink-haired protagonist runs into a bunch of weird characters on his travels, and sometimes, they'll cough up a task, and a subsequent reward when you're done. From finding lost dogs to solving strange riddles, the game's world is stuffed with daft little storylines. The only problem is that actually keeping track of your current objectives can be difficult. There's a quest list and a map, but you'll still need to remember who asked for what and where.

As such, backtracking, complete with chatting up every NPC in the vicinity, can start to bog the experience down. To be fair, it's not like the game's world is especially sprawling — but you'll still find