Review: Tokyo Scramble Is a Major Fumble

You know how sometimes you get so desperate for anything Dino Crisis-like that you end up giving games that are probably going to disappoint you because they are nowhere near that a chance because they seem to maybe involve similar situations? Well, that’s why I opted into Tokyo Scramble. I figured a survival-horror puzzle game that’s all about surviving encounters with “Zinos” and evading their assaults could maybe scratch that itch or, at the very least, present a goofy challenge. It failed on every front, and by the end I was hate-playing it just in the hopes that maybe the ending would try something interesting. (It doesn’t.)

Anne is a teenager on a train when a natural disaster hits. Is it an earthquake? Nope. It’s Zinos. Which are like dinosaurs, but also sometimes look like praying mantises, horseshoe crabs, or other creatures instead. Areas are destroyed and buried, and she seems to be all alone. She’ll need to use apps on her smart watch, which she names Diana, to do things like blind the beasts, trigger electronic distractions, unlock gates, restore power, and cause other interactions to find a way out from underground. 

Let’s get into why exactly Tokyo Scramble is a bad game. First, the story is terrible rather terrible. It is goofy and campy in a way that could have been fun if it leaned into the B-movie nature in the way Earth Defense Force does. But it isn’t so bad that it’s somehow good. It’s just all bad. It doesn’t even look good. Like at a glance, you might be mistaken and think it is fine due to a cinematic segment or being so preoccupied with not making a sound and seeing where you should be going. But if you really look at Anne or Ray’s character models or get into like a subway car or safe space where you can see a Zino up close, but duck out of the way to avoid actual danger, you’ll notice they don’t look great and some textures look poor.

The problem is the characterizations and personalities of absolutely everyone is pretty bad. Anne does not react properly to the situation in any way or at any time. All of her friends don’t always seem to care about the fact that Anne is underground and near death, and instead are so self absorbed that they’re talking about like infighting, crushes, their band (named Tokyo Scramble, of course) and even maybe being mad at her for something insignificant? (Some don’t even believe she’s in danger initially!) And instead of Anne reacting in a horrified manner, she’s just… chatting sort of like normal? After a few episodes, as the game is broken up into chapter-like stages, Anne’s brother Ray comes up and… honestly, I got the impression that he was maybe acting more like a boyfriend than her older sibling? (Did I mention the English voice acting and script are bad?) But at least he seems to grasp how dangerous the situation is and came to help? 

As Anne is defenseless and not able to directly use a gun/cars/weapons to deal with Zinos, the main gameplay mechanic in Tokyo Scramble involves one stealth puzzle after another. She can run, briefly, but if her heart rate goes above 150, you’re going to be forced to slow down and have a bad time. She can use apps on her phone to occasionally do helpful things to aid in evasion, like flash a Zino to temporarily blind them or cause an electronic item to make noise. However, her smartwatch’s battery is limited and you’ll only be able to perform a few actions each stage. If Ray shows up, he might be able to kill some Zinos if you run to certain spots. But for the most part, you need to move cautiously, be aware of the audio and visual sound effect cues that show a Zino is aware of you, and try and get through the levels.

This part seems like it should be fun, but it’s not! It’s incredibly limiting, due to the battery power element, even if you go with the easier difficulty. If a Zino catches you once, you’re dead and need to restart. This can be frustrating, because there are no clear indicators of which spots might be “safe” in some situations. Another problem I ran into is the third-person camera view is so close to Anne that you’re not going to get a good view of your surroundings and enemies, and there’s no real peek-around-corners-or-above-cover mechanic. This is a nuisance when it comes to tracking Zinos and figuring out where you need to go. Because it is very clear where the goal always is, but sometimes not how to get there safely.

I’m going to be frank. Sometimes, I would get so frustrated that I’d flat out run where Anne would need to go instead of dealing with sneaking around. What’s worse is that worked way more often than I expected it too. Which made me feel ridiculous that I wasted time trying to do things the “right” way. Because sometimes the NPC Zinos are really stupid and easy to outrun or evade, and other times I’d run into a situation with suddenly brilliant opponents, overwhelming numbers, or some sort of poor level design that would lead to cheap deaths. 

Also, the last three episodes are absolutely terrible. Is what I’m about to say a spoiler? Probably, but it’s bad and you deserve the warning. There are massive difficulty spikes at this point. The checkpoints aren’t great. One is a sort of boss fight situation that involves summoning down pile drivers to actually attack. But the cover is terrible, you’re supposed to do a lot of running and evading with multiple Zinos, and it is very easy for Anne’s heart rate to skyrocket, forcing you to restart the process because the camera perspective meant you didn’t see there was another enemy also nearby. One segment involves constantly running while a bad character model flails behind you, screaming wretchedly, while you need to try and figure out which direction to go and how to dodge its occasional assaults. 

All for an ending that sucks. Great job, Anne. 

Oh, there’s multiplayer too. It’s bad! I played it briefly, but nobody had a good time or wanted to play past the first episode. Which is understandable, because each person controls one part of Anne. One person moves her. One person controls the camera. Then the apps and ability to run would be assigned to other people. It can make progression near impossible. 

Tokyo Scramble is a mess of a game, and it’s not even a situation where it is so bad that some element of it is in some way enjoyable. The story is bad. The script is terrible. The stages can involve areas that are poorly designed or feature massive difficulty spikes. The multiplayer basically makes it impossible to survive. I wasted about five hours on this game that I will never get back. 

Tokyo Scramble is available for the Switch 2.