It has the linear platforming level design of Croc (though somehow even more simplified) and the tighter controls and movie-licensed nature of A Bug’s Life. The game plays like it was designed by someone who has only seen two videogames before, both from the first few years of the PS1. You leap from ledge to ledge in search of crystal acorns belonging to the Scratazon alien civilization that apparently appeared on some DVD extra on one of the Ice Age sequels. Ice Age: Scrat’s Nutty Adventure is a linear 3D platformer where you play as Scrat, the voiceless saber-tooth squirrel from the Ice Age films. It was, instead, a weird franchise tie in put out for $40 by a small development team. The most recent film came out in 2016 (there’s a sixth one planned) and Scrat’s Nutty Adventure came out in 2019 so this was not tied in to any particular product. The Ice Age film franchise has somehow managed to survive for almost 20 years without going extinct. Scrat's Nutty Adventure takes place in bland natural environments with floating platforms and obvious climbing walls. It feels like something of an entirely different time and place and yet there are aspects that are completely modern and it is simultaneously one of the most boring games I have ever played on a mechanical level and one of the most fascinating on a meta level of why this thing exists and what the people who made it were thinking. It is simultaneously crushingly commercial and wildly idiosyncratic both a mindless cash grab and the result of someone’s twisted vision. It contains so many odd design choices that I more or less plays like the designer had only ever had video game levels described to him second hand while he was drunk and had a hazy grasp of their principles. It looks like a modern, albeit low budget, game, and it controls reasonably well, on par with other third tier 3D platformers like Skylar & Plux, but the level design is incredibly basic and boring and it is extremely rough around the edges. The kind of licensed garbage that came out late in the console’s life and would get a 4 out of 10 from IGN or Gamespot. A 2019 release on all relevant platforms it legitimately feels like a low budget remake of a terrible PS1 game. Ice Age: Scrat’s Nutty Adventure is a game that feels like it shouldn’t exist.
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