Review: Tokyo Scramble (Nintendo Switch 2)

Tokyo Scramble is a survival-horror game for the Nintendo Switch 2. In fact, it’s exclusively for the Switch 2. And while it’s had a bad wrap, I found myself enjoying this one despite its flaws. 

This is obviously a late review. Tokyo Scramble has been out for a few months at this point. I played it some time ago and haven’t had a chance to get my thoughts down until now. My apologies to the developer. Still, I think it was worth the wait for a couple of reasons.

Firstly, my overall impression of this game was a positive one. When I started playing, I had no idea it was trending negatively online. The story follows a young girl named Anne trapped deep below the ground after an earthquake causes her subway to crash. The atmosphere was immediately creepy, with Anne lost and alone, edging her way through the ruins to find an exit.

It soon becomes obvious that Anne actually isn’t quite alone. While no human survivors are present, Anne stumbles upon a prehistoric-looking creature reminiscent of Jurassic Park’s velociraptors. If it hears your footsteps or spots your movements, this monster will chase and immediately kill you. This was an early indication of just how tricky the journey ahead was going to be.

Anne has no health meter; one hit and she’s done for. And death comes frequently. Thankfully, you restart close by at the latest autosave point, giving you another chance to find a way through the current scenario. The game is divided into chapters, each comprising several “rooms” to puzzle your way through. The goal is to get from one side to the other, avoiding or escaping from those giant creatures as you go.

We knew from the trailer that dinosaurs would be involved, but Anne comes across other monsters, too. There’s a large bat that has some kind of enhanced hearing, while a mantis-like creature scans the area with its red eyes. They’re all terrifying in their own way. Despite the dark tone, I enjoyed Anne’s humorous attempts at naming them as she finds them.

Anne also has no weapons to speak of (though she can trigger environmental hazards, which I’ll get to shortly). This adds to the creepiness as you’re forced to use stealth to move quietly and avoid conflict. One false move and you’re done for. The creatures have excellent hearing and eyesight, making this more of a stealth game than anything else.

Despite not having a weapon, Anne still has a few tricks up her sleeve. Quite literally, actually. She sports a nifty smartwatch that can open barriers and activate certain devices. These trigger things like lights, barriers, and other objects. Some are quirky and fun, adding a little more humor to this dark outing. The tech also feels very much at home in a game set in (or under) Tokyo. I enjoyed seeing giant dinosaurs falling for escalator-related traps or the bat creature being temporarily stunned thanks to a blaring alarm.

Speaking of tone, players will either love or hate the accompanying narrative to Anne’s journey. Anne is a teenager with friends on the surface. When service is reconnected to her cell phone, she sends and receives messages to and from her pals. On the plus side, I liked the fun, teenage vibe in contrast to the horrific ordeal underway. Having her friends available initially helps with Anne’s sense of loneliness. On the negative side, this concept was taken too far, with dialogue that felt unrealistic. Anne mentions her positive attitude a lot, which is great and all, but I don’t think anyone would talk the way she and her friends do during this crisis. It distracted me from the urgency of the situation and felt forced. 

Another thing that doesn’t make sense is how quickly Anne becomes out of breath. You can run for a short period, which naturally increases your heart rate. But within seconds, Anne collapses with weakness, the edges of the screen blackening as unconsciousness settles in. She still moves, but extremely slowly, like she’s run a marathon instead of merely 10 metres. This means you can only move fast for very short distances. While this is a common feature in many games (even Link has this issue at times), Anne’s fitness level is staggeringly bad; it feels unrealistic. And yes, this is a fantasy game about giant dinosaurs, but almost anyone could run longer than Anne.

On the plus side, I liked the way the game was divided into clear chapters. This gives you a chance to take a breath (see what I did there?) after completing each one, collecting yourself before the next challenge. There’s also a summary of your performance during the previous chapter, complete with optional objectives. It’s a fun way to provide an incentive to replay.

There are two difficulty modes: Hope and Despair. You can probably guess which one is the dedicated “hard” mode. I played through on “Hope” and still struggled, mind you. If there’s one thing that needs fixing in this game, it’s the difficulty settings. Things start off hard; I must have died ten or more times in chapter one alone. It can verge on frustrating, but the quick respawns help with that “just one more” feeling. There’s usually a clear path to take, but it’s not always obvious. Quite a few times I struggled in my attempts in one direction only to find that what I thought was the obvious route was actually a death trap. Sometimes you just have to try another way.

Graphically, I thought things looked pretty great—most of the time. There were some jittery effects from time to time that looked like things weren’t optimised properly; dinosaurs’ heads don’t move like that. And while the cutscenes looked great, Anne sometimes appeared to be a completely different person in other scenes. Something was off about her hair. Again, it was probably an optimisation thing.

As you’re reading this, you might be wondering what’s my second reason why a late review is a good thing. It turns out the developer has just released a patch for the game, responding to player feedback with a few tweaks. My review is based on the original version, and I’m interested to see if the reception changes now that the game has been updated.

Overall, Tokyo Scramble is a decent survival game. It’s a little rough around the edges, with a few graphical hiccups. The cute dialogue doesn’t always fit in, but then again, this is Tokyo! It’s the perfect setting for such a quirky game, and I enjoyed discovering what was hiding around each corner. I’d prefer a third, easier mode, or some way to mitigate the tricky sections with hints. But otherwise, this was a much better experience than I’ve read about online.