Toy Odyssey: The Lost and Found PlayStation 4 Review

Who didn’t image their childhood toys coming to life? I know I did. Recently launched on the PlayStation 4, Toy Odyssey: The Lost and Found gives you that nostalgic feeling. This classic looking side-scrolling game surely intended to retell your childhood sentiments though rogue-like platforming gameplay. Though the joy of your childhood memories fades a bit when the gameplay starts showing its hiccups, its curious world is worth unveiling and will keep you going.

In Toy Odyssey you play as Brand, an action figure that came to life not knowing how it happened. Soon, he realizes that his house is consumed by his owner Felix’s nightmare, the Darkness, and he would do anything to save the house and the other toys from this evil. The Darkness has built an army of the evil toys who are ruthless and hateful. This hate is, somehow, a puzzle of Felix’s dream and Brand must solve it by searching the house and eventually turning the lights on. Besides solving puzzles, Brand must rescue other toys. The Darkness is clever to build his army with all the discarded toys who will do anything to stop you achieving your goal.

Brand’s journey takes place within a large house where he mostly climbs various obstacles to move from a place to another. The map of the house is unveiled though exploration, and also by finding special items, in most cases unveiling requires keys to unlock doors. Felix’s bedroom, located in the center of house, acts as a base and Brand can move in either direction to explore the house. The game doesn’t force you into going through a set of linear levels and you’re free to explore wherever. For any platformer its difficulty is mostly considered based on the puzzles, regular mobs and boss fights, but Toy Odyssey: The Lost and Found takes it to a whole new level. Jumping vertically isn’t something difficult to deal with, but fighting off the random enemies during this process is. And especially when Brand fails to return to his base, the game restarts and resets from the base, while the rooms remain same it’s layout changes. For instance you were climbing a bookshelf and after restarting there’s a reading table to climb through.

Adding to that, every time you leave your base; outside of the house is different. While the rooms locations will always remain same, their layouts keep varying with different furniture and objects for climbing. Brand only has a basic sword slash attack when facing evil toys. Players collect bolts, which represent the game’s currency, after defeating evil toys. These bolts are used later on for crafting items. Brand’s basic inventory isn’t rich initially, so, players will have to concentrate on gathering bolts and blueprints and crafting items. Brand can initially carry six items, number which later goes up to fourteen, and can deposit collected items in the base. The gameplay gets interesting when evil toys invade Brand’s base to steal during nighttime. This assault takes place every night when Brand returns to his base or dies, and players have to build defense system to avoid losing stored items and rescued toys. When a toy is recaptured it must be immediately rescued again. When Brand rescues other toys, he makes allies and they can be deployed for scavenging.

While crafting items soon becomes a major need, players also have to spend bolts and gears to upgrade Brand’s stats. Players will find blueprints while scavenging which enables the crafting of weapons and gadgets. Each upgrade unlocks special abilities such as double jumping, gliding or dashing. Brand’s appearance changes as he levels up, making him a cowboy, space marine and also unlocking a variety of other outfits. However, these upgrade milestones are somewhat unpredictable, and you don’t really know which perk you’re unlocking ahead. The best idea is to simply keep upgrading until all the perks are unlocked. While upgrading your character isn’t much fun in Toy Odyssey, crafting weapons and gears is somewhat frustrating. This happens because players have to find a series of blueprints for crafting weapons and it’s common to find blueprints that don’t belong to the same series. For instance there are multiple types of weapons that can be crafted and the blueprints that you’ve found often don’t match the one you want to use. It’s obvious that you won’t enjoy playing with a weapon that doesn’t fit your style. Not to mention that finding these blueprints is purely depends on luck, as they are randomly scattered across the house.

If this doesn’t frustrate you enough, evil toys will surely do. Vertical movement leaves Brand exposed to attacks, while the randomness of the enemy interactions in Toy Odyssey boosts the difficult level. Evil toys are encountered very frequently and are absolutely unpredictable. They pop up in tight spots and will create as much trouble as possible, not just by attacking, but also by prompting Brand to fall from high places, which leads to him losing HP. Adding to this despair, the game always starts during night time. This means enemy toys are always there to welcome you when you start the game while invading your base. The game keeps advancing to night time even if you die during day time. If you’re among the trophy hunters, you’ll find this frustrating, because there’s a trophy which unlocks after you finish the game within a certain number of nights. And when the game keeps adding one night every time you die or restart the game, there’s a higher chance of never unlocking that.

However, Toy Odyssey: The Lost and Found is still fun exploring, especially the house which will definitely remind you your childhood story books. If luck permits, crafting weapons and leveling up Brand will be enjoyable too. The gameplay could’ve been a lot smoother given the circumstance that it’s actually a platformer. Then again, the idea of bringing your childhood nostalgic into a gameplay isn’t something meant to be smooth and easy. Simply because a child’s imagination will always reflect as challenging. With a mix of action, puzzle and building, aided by a creepy hand-drawn environment, the game actually succeeds to put you back into your childhood memories. When it comes to a challenging platforming experience, Toy Odyssey: The Lost and Found worth a try.

Sarwar Ron, NoobFeed
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