Continuing on with PS2 month by playing Ty the Tasmanian Tiger. It's a 3d platformer from early on in the console's life from Krome Studios (bit of a checkered history. Most people remember them from their Spyro entries, or possibly their contributions to the Star Wars and Transformers franchises) and it mimics a lot of things done in Jak & Daxter. To be fair, Jak & Daxter was pretty generic as well...it was mostly notable for its technology (which was AWESOME AS FUCK), but it was still a pretty fun platformer.

Ty deviates from Jak & Daxter in that it doesn't have a streaming world; it follows the more traditional hub-world that splits off into the individual levels that was widely popularized by Super Mario 64 (were there any 3d platformers beforehand that utilized that structure?). Additionally, you have full control of the camera, which isn't really that good of a thing considering how twitchy it is. When it's not being twitchy under manual control, it's being twitchy under automatic control. You never quite get comfortable with controlling it (or at least I haven't and I'm halfway through the game).

If you can get past the camera issues (and subsequent platforming problems caused by the camera), it's actually a decently fun title. If you like collect 'em ups, you'll probably dig it. I'm trying to 100% each of the levels, and for the most part they're pretty fun and meaty. Like Snowball 2 when he's passed out after Joffeman slips him a roofie.