Tokyo Jungle is one of the hidden gems of PlayStation Plus

Some games have a concept so good that the execution doesn’t really matter. Tokyo Jungle is about animals — exotic zoo animals, household pets, farm stock, and forest wildlife — fighting for survival and dominance in an overgrown, post-apocalyptic Tokyo, long after the complete disappearance of humankind. This is without a doubt one of the most exciting gaming elevator pitches in the 21st Century.

The PlayStation 3 game that sprang from this idea in 2012 is exactly as harsh, comical, and strange as it should be (and it’s now available to stream with PlayStation Plus Premium). Although it isn’t a great game or technology, this one isn’t a failure in terms of design. However, it’s a great idea and has been done so in an unfiltered manner that makes it more valuable.

Tokyo Jungle was made by Crispy’s!, an inexperienced indie studio, under the wing of Sony’s Japan Studio and PlayStation Studios’ then-president, Shuhei Yoshida. It’s a weird mixture of slick, corporate production and naive outsider art, with endearingly clashing aesthetics. Flashy interfaces with score attacks and constant background music sound like they came straight out of a fighting game in the early 2000s. The models are textured in a primitive, blurry way.

Image: Crispy’s, Japan Studio/Sony Computer Entertainment

Structureally in the main Survival mode Tokyo Jungle plays like a kind of arcade roguelike invented by someone who’d never heard of roguelikes. You choose your animal — at first, only yappy little Pomeranian dogs and fragile sika deer are available — and begin the hunt for food while avoiding bigger predators. The time goes by quickly; it takes only a few minutes for a year to go and you feel hungry all the while. The end is near and death can be a sign of trouble.

So, it’s crucial to keep moving. Tokyo is divided into small districts, and if you can “mark” a territory as yours, you can find a mate and breed there, whereupon you’re reborn as a new generation. The stat boost you receive and the pack of siblings that follow your around as additional lives are part of this deal. But with that, it’s time to press on into new, more dangerous territory, because no breeding nest can ever be used twice. You can only save your game by using nests. Tokyo Jungle’s cruelest feature and most frustrating flaw.)

If you’ve chosen a carnivorous predator — and yes, the ridiculous little Pomeranian counts as a predator — the focus of your game will be on basic, frantic, and surprisingly savage combat. If you play as a grazer, it’s easier to breed — but there’ll be more stealth as you attempt to sneak up to edible plants undetected by predators. Each of the game’s large suite of animals comes with a bespoke list of challenges, which unlocks new animals, and these challenges too have time limits. It is intense.

Tokyo Jungle is funny, both in its intentionally surreal, video-gamey touches — Dinosaurs! Giant bunnies Unlockable outfits! — and in the deadpan juxtapositions of a world where beagles, chickens, and tigers fight to the death in ruined shopping centers. It also displays the brutality and uncompromising sex of an especially unsentimental nature documentary. Its message was simple: Do not eat, but leave a lasting legacy.

In this way, it’s a less sophisticated, but more accessible and arguably more fun version of an even stranger experiment in playable Darwinism from 10 years prior: the GameCube’s Cubivore. That’s another game that would be great to rediscover in the weeds of some future subscription catalog. You can still enjoy the game until then. Tokyo Jungle Red in claw and tooth, remains the epitome of blunt animalism.