Although a little dated in design, Tamarin is a ton of fun for fans of good old fashioned Collectathon platformers.

Tamarin had the ingredients to become a remarkable experience, but the final product is a weird and shocking mixture of tones and genres. It has its moments, but terrible camera movements and cumbersome exploration ruin the experience.

Overall, Tamarin is an admirable attempt to bring back a type of game not widely popular in modern times. However, despite my love of old-school experiences, this sticks too close to its roots in the worst possible ways — this adorable monkey can’t save shoddy, outdated game design.

One of the more disappointing games of the year, Tamarin is pretty to look at but dead behind the eyes, offering very little to win over fans of Rare’s golden age.

Tamarin may look like the ideal nostalgic fix - evoking fond memories of Rare's Jet Force Gemini - but this is not the game you are looking for. Tamarin's external charms hide flawed and deeply dull gameplay. What's most frustrating is the squandered potential of Tamarin, this could have been a game worth playing, but sadly you're best keeping a safe distance from this particular monkey.

While Tamarin is certainly playable, it's hard to recommend it to anyone. Children might find the animals cute, but could be put off by the tonally dissonant violence, and adults looking for a throwback experience have a new Crash Bandicoot game, complete with new characters and experiences, on the horizon. With games such as the remastered Spyro, A Hat in Time, Snake Pass, and, of course, Mario, there are much better options out there - even the original Banjo-Kazooie games will bring more fun and charm than Tamarin, which doesn't seem to have a place to call home in either the past or the present.

On some level, I guess, Tamarin is sort of amazing, in that I can’t think of when I last played a game that was this much of an outright disaster on every level. I’ve played plenty of terrible games recently, but at least in those cases you could see what they were going for, and you could imagine what good versions of those games might look like. In Tamarin, the game is an absolute fiasco at a conceptual level. That doesn’t mean you should play it, of course, but the game gets points for effort, if absolutely nothing else..