This was supposed to be an in-depth review and Toro was supposed to be worth my twenty quid. Neither is working out.
Browsing the PlayStation Store I happened across an unusual game named Toro – a bullfighting arcade simulator, or so the game’s description said. Intrigued, bored and with more money in the bank than I know what to do with, I thought “sod it” and decided to pony up the cash and download the game.
So the download started and I went off to stick the kettle on and have a cup of tea while I wait for the download to finish. PS4 downloads usually take a while, despite my top-range connection, so it was to my surprise that I returned to the couch a couple of minutes later to find the game had already downloaded and installed. What the hell? Ah, it turns out the game is just a little over 600mb in size. Unfortunately, not one of those megabytes was worthy of taking up the precious space on my hard-drive.
I’ll dive right in and I won’t be kind about it – the game is a steaming pile of wank. This much became pretty apparent after the short intro video finished and I was left with a very barren starting screen with the option to start a ‘Career’ mode.
So I went ahead and did it and got pushed through the basics in a very boring and uninspired tutorial, then I got to the proper event and did the exact same thing I did in the tutorial: I pressed a couple of buttons until a very low poly, poorly animated bull ran at me, I avoided his horns, then did it all again. That was it.
As depressing as it sounds, I stuck at it for a good half an hour before setting down the controller, turning off the television and taking a couple of minutes to think about what my next course of action should be. This game was atrocious, crap and quite frankly – shit.
The graphics belonged on the PS2 and I’m not talking about the sorta-good-by-todays-standards-God-of-War type, I’m talking the sort of stuff that launched on the console. Did the developers intend to make such a terribly poor game?
I fired up the console again and reloaded the game and found the credits. Much to my surprise, the credits actually have real names, not aliases. Right, so these people actually want their names attached to this product? Personally, I’d have left this one off my CV…
I didn’t even think to grab a couple of screenshots or record a video before purging the game from my PS4, but there is a trailer down below which, in fairness, doesn’t try and sell the game as being the graphical standpoint for others to follow.
The real thing that is learned from this is that Microsoft and Sony will allow any piece of crap on their consoles. What happened to being proud of your product? Remember the Nintendo seal of approval? We need this back, big time. If the people in charge of getting content onto the consoles are allowing this kind of rubbish to slip by, it’s setting a very bad precedent and we can only expect more rubbish to clog up the respective stores.
It’s the sort of thing we see towards the end of a consoles life-span, not the start. This is shovel-ware rubbish that just doesn’t belong next to the likes of The Last of Us, Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare and all the rest. Surely there has to be a minimum standard? If this game meets the minimum standard, something has to change, lest we be inundated with every shitty animal simulator from the iOS and Google Play Store.
If the game was only a couple of quid, I’d write it off as a daft mistake on my part and not think twice about it, in fact, I’d probably appreciate it a little more if the price reflected the quality.
So, to conclude this little rant I’d like to say to Sony and Microsoft: get your crap together. Don’t let this kind of garbage become a regular thing. It’s a shame to see the stores tarnished by such an inferior product and really doesn’t show either in the best light.
Toro is available on the PS4 and Xbox One. Do yourself a favour and avoid it. Jumping on LEGO with staples attached to your nipples would be more pleasing than this game.