Tokyo Scramble Switch 2 Review

Tokyo Scramble Switch 2 Review
Version Reviewed: Nintendo Switch 2

Tokyo Scramble seemingly arrived out of nowhere, debuting during the latest Nintendo Direct with some generous airtime and serious Dino Crisis energy. Front and centre was Anne, a teenager living in Tokyo, dealing with the same pressures many of us remember from our own high school years. Juggling friendships. Trying to figure out who you are. And avoiding being eaten by velociraptors? What’s It Like? Don’t worry about your subway ticket, charge your phone, make sure your apps are updated, as we review Tokyo Scramble on Nintendo Switch 2.

Tokyo Scramble follows Anne, who is travelling on a train to meet her friends when disaster strikes, sending the train plunging deep beneath the city. When she awakens, there are no signs of survivors. Instead, she quickly realises something far worse is lurking in the tunnels. Dinosaurs. Or as she calls them, “Zino,” roaming the underground and hunting for their next meal. The narrative does not give you much to begin with. Instead, it unfolds in a very Gen Z fashion through a steady stream of text messages. Conversations pop up between moments of exploration, highlighting what is happening above ground while you fight to survive below it. At first, the premise genuinely gripped me. The mystery of why dinosaurs have infested the underground, what caused the crash, and how the city appeared to be under attack felt like the backbone of something intriguing. Unfortunately, that intrigue quickly gives way to teenage melodrama. Rather than digging deeper into the catastrophe itself, much of the narrative is spent on friendship tensions and band drama. There is a strange disconnect between Anne narrowly avoiding being eaten alive and her friends complaining that she is not available to hang out. It is a shame, because the mystery surrounding Anne’s accident and the dinosaur outbreak feels far more compelling than the teenage drama competing for attention.

Anne is not a mercenary or a highly skilled soldier, so gameplay revolves around waiting, hiding, and using environmental objects via her smartphone. You can use apps to open gates, activate lifts, and even launch netballs at raptors, which Anne calls “Goblins,” to stay alive. While Goblins make up the majority of enemies, there are a few others that add something different to the game. There is a praying mantis-style creature that detects movement and makes a specific noise. They are reminiscent of the Clickers from The Last of Us, and when they first arrive, the tension is immediate. There is also a bat-like creature with sensitive hearing. When it stops to listen, you cannot make a sound, or it will zero in on you. Finally, there are two boss-type monsters, each offering unique mechanics to counter in tense confrontations. Built-in apps require a charge and offer tactical advantages. A flash stuns Zinos, music helps lower your heartbeat, and an alarm can lure them toward you. Your stamina is limited. Once your heartbeat reaches a certain point, you slow to a crawl. If something is chasing you, that usually means death.

Unfortunately, this results in gameplay that often feels slow and tedious. Finicky enemy behaviour and cheap obstacles, placed around blind corners or hidden from view, turn many encounters into frustrating trial and error. If I had to describe it, it reminded me of sneaking into Hyrule Castle in Ocarina of Time. You watch enemy patterns, wait for the right moment, and if you get spotted or make a mistake, you restart at a checkpoint. In Tokyo Scramble, there were sections where I would make two or three meters of progress, die, and repeat. Even though the credits roll after roughly 5.5 hours, nearly 40 to 50 per cent of that time was spent running to die just to figure out the correct path.

The frustration is amplified by erratic AI. Sometimes a Zino would remain stationary for long stretches, leaving me staring at the screen, waiting for the game to progress. This inconsistent behaviour makes it hard to plan your next move and increasingly reduced my enthusiasm to play. I was so disappointed that the game was reduced to this. The world-building and tension in the opening moments did a great job of drawing me in, making the tunnels feel alive and dangerous. The more the game progresses, however, the more it seems to unravel. The early promise of high-stakes survival and mysterious dinosaurs is gradually replaced by repetitive obstacles and teen melodrama, which makes the experience feel smaller and less exciting than it should have been.

Visually, Tokyo Scramble is hard to pin down. On one hand, the character designs, including the monsters, look good and are well animated. On the other hand, the environments are often bland. The game uses Unreal Engine as its base, but it does not always feel fully optimised for the Switch 2. Lighting can feel weak, which reduces immersion; textures often appear flat, and geometry sometimes fails to load correctly, leaving objects squared off and blocky. There are sections that move away from the underground tunnels, and these areas breathe a little life back into the game as they give players something new to explore and a brief reprieve from the repetitive underground environment. Cutscenes show the engine’s potential, with improved lighting, shading, and model detail. During gameplay, however, these visual strengths are less apparent, and the experience often feels less polished and optimised. Performance-wise, frame rates are mostly stable, but occasional stutters and load-ins can break the tension. Overall, while the visual presentation has strong moments, it rarely reaches the promise suggested by the game’s trailers and opening sequences.

For gamers looking into accessibility, Tokyo Scramble offers very few options. There is no way to highlight enemies or points of interest, and the game features many dark environments that can make it difficult to discern objects in the world. There are visual cues for when you are about to be spotted or heard, which is helpful for players who may have difficulty with audio cues. These indicators are useful, but they also add to the visual clutter, especially combined with the blur effect that appears when stamina is low. As always, I recommend that players do further research into finding out if Tokyo Scramble suits your accessibility needs before purchasing.

Tokyo Scramble comes in at a reasonable price point of $30 AUD and offers some sneaking action for those who enjoy stealth games. As a concept, it is interesting and takes risks, particularly with the unusual Gameshare mode. I was unable to test this feature during my review time, but it allows players to split movement and camera controls in a unique combination. The problem is that in execution, Tokyo Scramble wears out its goodwill after the first 45 minutes. Extremely frustrating trial-and-error gameplay dominates the experience, and in my opinion, it is simply not fun. The game feels as if it has taken the most aggravating mandatory stealth sections of other games and stretched them into a full-length experience.

So what’s it like? Tokyo Scramble is like sneaking into Hyrule Castle, except with dinosaurs.

In the Interest of full disclosure, a review copy was provided by the publisher, but this doesn’t influence my score.

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