I spent $3 on this game during a sale. I paid too much.
In my thirty-something years on this plant playing video games, I have never come across anything as utterly broken as Troll And I on the Nintendo Switch. Within minutes of playing, I was already comfortable calling this the hands-down worst Nintendo Switch game ever released. I nearly died of laughter and couldn’t even make it fifteen minutes.
Not that I wanted to play more but I couldn’t as the game decided to randomly throw a loading screen at me for no reason that just sort of stalled the game. I say sort of because the game was still playable behind the loading screen. Hell, the game is probably more playable this way. I couldn’t even capture video because the feature didn’t work in this game and I had to use my iPad to get anything. But let’s start from the beginning.
From the first seconds of the experience that is Troll And I you know this is going to be a fantastic sort of shit show. Characters look like the temp models you place before the actual models get placed into the game. I know the Nintendo Switch isn’t a powerhouse, but this shit would be terrible even back on the PS2. Every single scene is rendered in single-digit FPS and stutters like I’m running a graphics benchmark on half a baked potato.
But since this is a port maybe the team on the Nintendo Switch version had to cut some corners and the cutscenes were what had to suffer which is fair enough. The problem is that things just get even worse when the game starts up in earnest. Gameplay stutters all the time. I’m not meaning that as a joke; the game stutters 100% off the time. Everything looks like its ghosting and I had a legitimate headache after only a few minutes of playing the game.
Animations are broken, sometimes not even engaging. The first task is to bitch at your mom for no reason and then go hunt down a boar. The game teaches you about collecting and making spears because this is a sort of crafting/survival game. The first time I automatically made a spear everything went well. I still wanted to vomit, but it worked fine. The second time I make a spear the branch disappeared and my character simply phased out of existence.
Troll And I may legitimately give you seizures even if you aren’t prone to them
Someone who threw up in their own mouth
Hunting the boar was simple enough, although fighting the framerate was not fun as you have to aim and throw your spear. Should be easy as pie but because the game runs in single-digits aiming is nearly impossible as everything stutters about. I speared the boar only to have to give him a second shot to put him down. In any other game, the animal would take damage and then run away, forcing you to track them down.
Troll And I never got the message and so when the boar was struck he zoomed away like the goddamn Road Runner, only without moving his legs. It zoomed away like I had shoved a rocket up its ass. I nearly died of laughter and knew this was something truly special. Remember that we are only minutes into the experience and we have enough technical issues for an entire game. But we are only getting started.
After killing a few boars for dinner (you live on a fully stocked farm mind you) you head back home. On your way back the game stutters and you see an explosion in the distance that nearly breaks the game. You run into the woods being on fire which tanks the performance even more. You ghost about and see your mom trapped and try to save her. This is just about the time the game gave up the ghost.
She tells you to run and you shift into an auto-run segment much like something out of the modern Tomb Raider games. The problem was that the game didn’t know what part of the game to load for me. So here I am in a forced forward run only being able to shift side to side. But instead of a path in the forest, the game loaded the opening area where the cutscene took place. So I was running through my homestead while everything burned.
I simply ran through a bunch of stuff, phasing through the environment, only stopping when I burned to death because I got stuck in the fence line the separated the family farm from limbo. The character model merged with the fence post in a nightmare scenario. Imagine a fence post with arms and legs screaming to death as it burned. That was my first Game Over, but it would not be the last that wasn’t my fault.
I figured I simply took the wrong path running from the fire (I was still being generous to the sad humans that worked on this) but when the game reloaded I got the same cutscene of my mom stuttering and telling me to run, except that this time it loaded a totally different part of the game. I was not on a locked path running down a trail that was on fire. This time prompts popped up telling me to hit a button to jump or slide under fallen tree trunks.
This was easy enough except that I once again died when a large tree branch spawned two-frames before I hit it. Another time a sound played like a branch fell in my path but decided to sleep in and never showed up on the screen. Another time I simply burst into flames as I ran, the game simply trying to kill itself and save me the trouble. After a few attempts, I made it to a bridge and a goddamn Troll burst through and tried to eat me. I was scared shitless as the model was broken. Teeth were shooting in all directions like they were made out of whatever is inside those Stretch Armstrong dolls.
The game kicks off another forced running section, only this time you were sliding down a gorge trying to avoid rocks in the way. This worked beautifully in Tomb Raider but not so much here. The ghosting made avoiding obstacles nearly impossible. Things were made worse as the ground you were sliding on never moved. Shit was zooming at you like you were sitting still as the obstacles were being pushed on an ice rink. So between the ghosting, the motionless ground, and the moving objects, I threw up in my mouth.
This isn’t some angry review schtick. I really threw up in my mouth because my brain simply gave up trying to process what was beaming into my eye holes. I have never gotten sick playing a video game until today. I had to pause the game and go outside to get some air. Troll And I was actively trying to kill me in real life. We are now only about ten minutes into this stupid, stupid game. I’m pretty sure it should be illegal to sell a game like this. Troll and I may legitimately give you seizures even if you aren’t prone to them.
Troll And I was running behind the load screen I was being shown. This was probably the most playable the game had been.
The dumbass who spent $3 on this game
The only good thing was that there is a death animation for slamming into rocks. I say good because with so much ghosting you get to see it two or three times in quick succession. Once you reach the bottom another quick-time event triggers as some monster jumps on you and you are forced to stab it in the brain. You get up and just move on. You don’t even mention that some Dark Crystal reject character just tried to rip your goddamn head off. These creatures aren’t mentioned, aren’t set up, and apparently just live next to this random and very modern Scandanavian village.
I know about the Troll because he’s on the stupid cover, but even he is set up in the games broken intro. Some rich asshole wants to spend millions of dollars hunting this Troll because he read about a bigfoot sighting in a newspaper. He gives some other asshole the money and then the game jumps five-years because fuck everything. The game stutters so much it could have been a glitch for all I know. Back to what the developers call a video game.
After killing a mutant rat you are thrown into the crafting tutorial. You are shown that skinning animals lets you regain lots of health, some plants a little health, and how to craft weapons. Mind you that I just murdered this rat-fucker with a massive bowie knife. The player character which looks 13 but sounds 40 stabs the thing in the head and then immediately picks up a stick. He then remarks how cool it is because now he has a weapon. What about that god damn Crocidile Dundee knife you still have in your other hand in the cutscene?
Another tutorial shows how to make a club (not as god a huge fucking knife) with the stick and the jawbone of the boar from earlier in the game. I immediately holster it because I have a massive knife. You then collect some plants in what looks like those old Seeing Eye puzzles. Shadows are all made of blocks, shifting grass looks like I’m wearing 3D glasses, and the dreadlocks of the character look like long dingleberries that move like they have their own gravity.
The game then teaches you how to scale objects that have a white trim. I press the button and I scale the chest-high ledge only for a rat monster in the distance walk around some rocks all as my character turns his head over his shoulder to look at me. He gives me some sort of constipated look before the screen goes black for a split second, then back to the game, then into the loading screen. The only problem was that the game wasn’t loading, it was only showing me the screen that it uses to load.
Nothing in the game needed to or actually loaded. This is now fifteen minutes into the game. The loading screen never went away but I could hear all the game sounds and even heard myself moving through the pause menu. So I made the best of it and kept playing. Troll And I was running behind the load screen I was being shown. This was probably the most playable the game had been.
I ran around doing fuck all before I died. Then the game just stopped working. And I even tried restarting the console and doing it all again but the game froze in the same spot. I literally could only play 15 minutes of the game. I’ve seen some shoddy ports on the Nintendo Switch but I’ve never had a game crash on me and not be able to progress. This is when I shut off my Nintendo Switch, drove to the nearest church, and spent the rest of the day praying for everyone that worked on this port. I prayed that they would never again be allowed to make a video game for the Nintendo Switch.
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