Video Game Bytes: Tornado Outbreak review

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By Joseph Szadkowski

Here's an abbreviated look at a video game for the entire family.

• Tornado Outbreak (from Konami for PlayStation 3, $39.99) — One of nature's most powerful forces stars in a third-person action game loaded with destruction.

A player controls the wind warrior Zephyr, a pint-size fellow from a noble group of air elementals tasked with creating an atmosphere on barren lands around the universe.

His ability to transform into a tornado takes him and his cohorts on almost a dozen missions to stop megavillain Omegatron and his Fire Flier minions.

A player controls Zephyr in windy form as he picks up and consumes nearly everything near him. After sucking the feathers off of fowl, tossing researchers around and blowing away bovines, he continues to grow, allowing him to smash bigger items such as tanks and buildings.

Action includes dismantling a farming community, a secret military base and a dinosaur theme park, catching and absorbing Fire Fliers and even battles against giant, fire-spewing totems.

To make life difficult, the tornado must stay away from sunlight or Zephyr burns down in size. Worse yet, chunks of each adventure are against the clock.

An intelligently designed two-player cooperative mode, in which a pair of tornados works together to complete missions, also is worth enjoying.

They first lay down a general swath of destruction to get bigger. Next, one player drives a tornado through a beautifully presented vortex course while the other protects the first from Fire Fliers and then fireballs.

With a high-definition presentation, Pajama Sam animation style and Ben 10 villain designs, Tornado Outbreak will capture a tween's attention and could even blow parents away.