The Xbox One games library is chock-a-block with local multiplayer titles, but I can’t honestly remember seeing one in which you earn points and win games by keeping a goat on top of your head for the longest amount of time.
Toto Temple Deluxe however thrives on madness…unfortunately not an awful lot of it is positive.
The main aim of the game is to take control of a strange character and zip around a number of small arena based levels, grabbing an egg-laying goat and placing it on your head as quickly as you can. The man, woman or child with said goat on their bonce will earn points, whilst everyone else attempts to bash into them in order to steal the four legged fiend. The first person to hit 3000 points wins the round and the game, but quite possibly loses at life.
Admittedly, the arenas in which you’ll partake in are fairly well designed, allowing for a decent amount of strategy for both the goat holder and their friends. Some will move and flex as the game progresses, others will require bashing against blocks in order to open up the playing field, with further unlockable ones bringing certain power-ups and slight game changers to the field. Whichever it is, you’ll need to utilise your quickest reactions in order to win. The inclusion of numerous collectible coins, popping up from the eggs that the goat lays, also increases your score, so even those not adept at bashing the goat can still occasionally turn out victorious. Depending on how you define victorious that is.
I also can’t complain about the somewhat lovely visuals that are in place, with plenty of sharp colour running throughout the entire game. But bright and beautiful has never won a place in my videogaming heart, and it certainly isn’t going to be starting now.
The second game mode that is present does away with our standard four legged friend, instead strapping a ticking time bombing lookalike to the head of the players. Be the holder of the grenade as it explodes and as long as your opponents are in it’s blast zone, you’ll turn out to be the winner. If they are not, then a new bomb will spawn for the so-called madness to continue rolling. Bomb mode brings a slight degree of variation to the otherwise samey gameplay and most definitely brings a longer game length to proceedings, but just like the Goat holding initial mode, falls short of anything more than average.
Team based modes of each the goat and bomb sections ensure that four players can, if required, get busy with it. If you don’t have four, then the option to throw a customisable AI or two into the action at least allows for a little fun. In practice though, no matter which of the difficulty levels you use, you’ll find the AI will either be utterly stupid, or completely unbeatable, with very little room for manoeuvre in the middle.
Aside from a quick fire target and points collection solo or co-op mode, that yet again fails to fully deliver, that is about that for Toto Temple Deluxe. I guess you could spend some time looking at the unlockable goat variations that have been included (some of which are pretty decent fun), or spend a couple of minutes mixing and matching the different Temple arenas in order to find one that suits you, but that begins to push things far too far for my liking.
A game that initially looks quite interesting, with some fast paced, twisted multiplayer action and a lovely humorous and silly undertone, can’t do anything other than leave you completely disappointed, if only because the severe lack of game modes will fail to keep you interested for much longer than an hour.
Much of the problem with Toto Temple is down to its absolute lack of variety and with no online multiplayer in place, local battles are the only way to go. With only four different variations – two of which are team based, on the King of the Hill style that it attempts to hit, even with a few mates round, you’ll not be finding much joy or fun.
Toto Temple Deluxe is nothing more than a quick and simple local multiplayer king of the hill title…and that’s something you can find in a whole host of other, much better games.
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