After Hours: Ice Age: Scrat’s Nutty Adventure

Hey all, a game where you play as a tiny furry creature trying to navigate their environment is what everyone is playing today, right? But unfortunately, this being a column about games based on Disney properties, it will not be about the hot game of the moment, Stray (which unfortunately I so don’t have time for myself), but about a 2019 game starring a character that was not owned by Disney at his conception but was by the time the game came out was a Disney-owned character thanks to the deal with Fox.

That’s right, Ice Age is now a Disney property and while the future of the franchise seems pretty up in the air, its breakout character, the amusingly stupid Scratt, did have a video game released in late 2019. Why am I covering this now? Well because it was just recently added to the PlayStation Plus extra library for the month of July and if you don’t have that tier it’s also on sale so the timing seemed appropriate.

Now, my exposure to the Ice Age franchise as a whole is pretty limited, I’ve seen a few of the shorts, and that’s really about it. But as Scrat’s Nutty Adventure isn’t directly tied to any of the movies that seems like enough knowledge really.

Ice Age: Scrat's Nutty Adventure is one hell of a rarity be it 2019 or 2022. A licensed kid’s platformer not tied to any particular movie with its own original story that is crazy enough to be kind of entertainingly silly really (basically you are on a quest to restore some kind of super squirrel race to its former glory, though given how much of a simpleton Scrat is, I’m not positive how much of that mission he really understands). You collect energy nuts, tablets, and statues, and gain mysterious powers like a double jump! (you also get better real powers like limited telepathy later). As one of the last of a pretty much dead breed of game, does Ice Age Scrat’s Nutty Adventure give any evidence that licensed platformers based on kid's properties have a place in the modern day and age?

Not really, no. And it’s for all the reasons you’d expect. Ice Age: Scrat’s Nutty Adventure suffers from just about every problem nearly all licensed games aimed at kids have suffered from. It might as well be a Playstation 2 game along with the likes of Ratatouille or Robots or Monsters Inc. The game doesn’t look particularly good, the jumping both before and after earning the double jump is terrible. You can throw stones at enemies but the lock-on targeting is mostly garbage. And the worst enemy in Ice Age: Scrat’s Nutty Adventure? That’s right it’s the camera, which occasionally will just completely bug out and screw you over for aiming, jumping properly, or even seeing enemies.

So ultimately, probably not surprisingly, Ice Age: Scrat’s Nutty Adventure is exactly what you would think it is, a very mediocre licensed platformer that belongs squarely in the era where those were still prevalent despite being released only three years ago.

That’s it for today, probably will not have another post this week unless some unexpected news that is worth writing a whole entry about drops but look for another post next week, see ya real soon!