It’s an amazing title that exceeds all expectations, and even during some of the more difficult sections is hard to put down for more than a few minutes. There isn’t a single recent title that comes to mind that truly captures what made retro titles great while also managing to be outstanding all by itself. Save Me Mr Tako! is a title that is for anyone who loves amazing platformers with a perfect balance of puzzles, combat, challenges and story.
Tasukete Tako San is a wonderful nostalgia trip, it's a game worth to buy and try that will remind you the golden time of gameboy playing hiden in your blanket fort with a hot chocolate mug.
The gameplay is good, the idea to transform enemy into platform encourage exploration and secret discovering.
Have you ever played on a Game Boy (and presumably enjoyed it)? Or have you ever wondered what that was all about? This is a game that you should absolutely check out.
I've always loved the charm of the Kirby series, but I often find the platforming of those games unsatisfying and the story far too shallow. Save me Mr Tako captures the cuteness of Kirby while elevating the gameplay and crafting a story truly worthy of emotional investment. You can feel the sincerity shining through in the dialogue, the music, and every square of pixel art. This game is an excellent tribute to Game Boy classics of the past, but it is a beautiful gaming experience in its own right.
Heads up, though -- Save me Mr Tako is a little tough at times, like many of the titles it is inspired by! You will probably find yourself playing a handful of the levels over ten times till you crack the code. Here are some tips that helped me get through when the going got tough:
- Take your time. Rushing headlong through the level will never do you any favors.
- Look down to scout out the level, and for goodness sake, look down before you leap!!
- Sometimes no hat is better than the ones you have available.
- On almost all levels, if you find yourself running out of lives/feathers and know you are going to have to make another run, you can exit the level from the pause screen. This restores you to the world map with all the lives you had before, saving you the trouble of stocking up on feathers again.
- You can fast forward through cut scenes with the minus ( - ) button. If you aren't on the Switch, check the devs Twitter account (@ChrisDeneos) for instructions.
Good luck with your Tako-san adventure!
Don’t be fooled: seeing Tako’s quest through to the very end will test your platforming skills, patience, and perseverance to their absolute limits. I am thrilled to have completed what I can safely say is one of the most challenging video games I have ever played.
Save Me Mr Tako is a cheery delight with surprisingly thought-provoking dialogue, but I could only perform the same gameplay for so long. Ultimately, the experience wasn’t engaging enough to push me through to the conclusion, but I wish Mr. Tako the best in his efforts to end the tragic conflict between octopi and humans.
Save Me Mr. Tako! succeeds in its aim of recreating a Game Boy game. Unfortunately, that is all that it succeeds in. It is a competent game but relies too much on cheap deaths to pad out its mediocre gameplay.
As charming as it may appear, Save me Mr. Tako never convinced me it was being genuine. Barebones level design, poor writing, and frustrating design choices make this overly-sweet experience nauseating.
Being a big fan of Game Boy games, such as Kirby's Dreamland and Kirby's Dreamland 2, and octopuses, I was super excited to play it. It's super nostalgic and a real love letter to classic handheld games.
Pros:
- You can change the colour palette, border, and screen resolution. I personally prefer the pink/yellow/blue colour palette and the widescreen with the border.
- Great music! It really sounds like a Game Boy game. The composer did a lovely job.
- A lovely story. I was always surprised how the plot would evolve. And I loved the themes and messages.
- Charming characters. I found myself getting attached to a lot of characters, which always makes me happy. I love Loulou, Azuria, Saki, Evan, and of course Tako, himself.
- New but familiar gameplay. There aren't too many controls, so it's easy for anyone to pick up and play.
Cons:
- Enemies hitting you off-screen. It's not fun to die and not know what killed you.
- Weird hitboxes for some obstacles and enemies. I found myself dying a lot by things that shouldn't have hit me.
- Hats have little to know explanation. Most hats are self-explanatory, but some hats you don't know what they do until after dying a few times.
- Some of the harder stages lack checkpoints.
Despite those flaws, it's still a game worth playing. If you're interested in classic 2D platformers that can get pretty challenging, then this is a game for you.
In it's adoration of the Gameboy Classic, Save Me Mr Tako is blinded to new advances in gameplay and comes across as trying, and failing, to emulate Shovel Knight's brilliant use of nostalgia. It fails to innovate, therefore coming across less as a love letter and moreso as a blind circlejerk, failing to throw away what didn't work in the Gameboy era.
The game's creator inserts political issues which serve no relevance to the game whatsoever, and feel very forced into an otherwise fantasy-based game.
SummaryIn a world where humans and octopi are at war, Mr Tako is a persistently helpful little octopus who rescues a woman from drowning one stormy night. A fairy sees this act of bravery and grants him the ability to survive on land, where he can turn enemies into platforms by spitting ink at them. As he travels across the surface world, Mr Ta...