Ice Age: Scrats Nutty Adventure
Age: 3+
The device tested: Nintendo Switch.
What its about…
For anyone who knows and loves Ice Age, poor Scrat is forever chasing his elusive nut, which often leads him into some precarious and hilarious predicaments. Scrats adventure starts off often where we leave Scrat, just about to enjoy his nut before something happens. This time, his unfortunate curse leads him to discover a hidden world of the Scratazons where Scrat is enlisted to find four Crystal Nuts, each one imbuing Scrat with a new ability to help him on his adventure. Find all the nuts and open the door to the Golden Age of the Scratazons and receive your reward…
Gameplay
The game itself is straightforward enough, a 3D platform game that involves lots of jumping and traversing various paths, roads, mountainsides, etc. while you fight off enemies and collect hidden secrets. The world is broken down into four sections, each section has four stages and a boss level. The boss levels are simple enough once you know the patterns and traversing the routes does get more difficult as you progress in the game, but nothing should be too difficult – for an adult anyway.
The real critic
My daughter is aged 7 and absolutely loved the game. The cutscenes made her laugh and the game was challenging at times for her, requiring a lot of hand-eye coordination, which is where I think these games are really beneficial. Once she got the hang of things, it became easier until the boss levels. It took a little while, but she eventually was able to beat them, something she was very proud of.
Who doesn’t love a puzzle?
This game also has puzzles that you need to solve to find the secrets. There are very easy ones to get but to get them all, there are more difficult puzzles to solve. Watching my daughter try to solve the challenges was interesting as she tried different approaches each time until she found the solution (although occasionally a tip or hint from me was required). While playing the game, not always following the path laid out pays dividends and teaches your child to be aware of what is around them.
The full story is relatively short taking only a few days to get through the story, but solving all of the puzzles and finding the hidden tablets will take much longer (some of them quite a while as you look to find a door you opened somewhere in the map).
Time to compete
For an extra bit of fun (and competition), we timed ourselves on sections to see who could get through levels quickest. This pushed my daughter to move quickly and really focus on her coordination and awareness.
One (very small) critique
My only criticism, and my daughters too is the camera which, at times, became a hindrance as it cannot go through walls often leaving you facing the wall if you fell off an edge and every time you moved away reverted back, leaving you running back into the wall again. This can become frustrating at times, particularly during jumping sequences that involved lots of platform-hopping.
Rating
I would give this game four stars out of five (I only drop the star because of the camera). It is easy going, lots of fun and great for children in developing hand-eye coordination and problem-solving and would make a great Christmas present for the kids.
Scrat’s Nutty Adventure is available to buy from Symths, Game and retails at £34.99.
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*I received this game and a small fee in return for an honest review*
