Incredibly brief, yet padded with plenty of frustration. I've been helping my kids with a handful of licensed games recently, and Bluey's debut title unfortunately has more jank than Peppa Pig, PJ Masks, and Miraculous Ladybug all put together.
From a certain point of view, I respect the inclusion of 3D platforming elements that require precise jumps (hopping from rock to rock at the creek, or jumping towards the camera on the shelves in Bluey's room), but when my 3-year-old keeps passing me the controller because the game won't allow him to progress until he presses Y in a tiny pixel-perfect location, I start to wonder how much testing went into this.
The animations, VO, and setting obviously carry the experience, underneath what was licensed lies a bland and broken platformer containing 4 levels to replay and 5 hub world areas to explore. We had a much better time hunting for collectibles in the post-game (if you can even call it that) than we did in any scripted segments, but even then, some items seem to resist your attempts to collect them if you're the tiniest bit too close or too far.
The biggest issue we had is that the camera simply does not know what to do during co-op. The issue of how to handle distance between players is not unique to Bluey: The Videogame, but it's handled exceptionally poorly. In something like Gauntlet Legends, you can all run in different directions until the camera reaches a maximum zoom-out, leaving players to determine together which direction they'll travel in. In many Lego games, the screen will dynamically split, allowing two players to travel apart, then un-split the screen when they return together. But in Bluey, the camera picks one player seemingly at random to prioritize. It's not always P1, and it's not always whoever's closest to the middle of the screen, but the chosen player is granted agency, while any remaining players get auto-returned like a drone that's lost connection to the remote control. This becomes a huge problem when any obstacle lies between the returning character and the other player, as you cannot alter your course until you're within arm's length of your teammate. It's busted!
It's also got that frustrating audio thing that licensed games always seem to do, where the volume levels are all over the place, and when multiple characters speak at the same time, there's no reduction in gain, so the volume suddenly quadruples when the family shouts "Yeah!" together. WHY IS THIS SUCH A CONSISTENT ISSUE
From a certain point of view, I respect the inclusion of 3D platforming elements that require precise jumps (hopping from rock to rock at the creek, or jumping towards the camera on the shelves in Bluey's room), but when my 3-year-old keeps passing me the controller because the game won't allow him to progress until he presses Y in a tiny pixel-perfect location, I start to wonder how much testing went into this.
The animations, VO, and setting obviously carry the experience, underneath what was licensed lies a bland and broken platformer containing 4 levels to replay and 5 hub world areas to explore. We had a much better time hunting for collectibles in the post-game (if you can even call it that) than we did in any scripted segments, but even then, some items seem to resist your attempts to collect them if you're the tiniest bit too close or too far.
The biggest issue we had is that the camera simply does not know what to do during co-op. The issue of how to handle distance between players is not unique to Bluey: The Videogame, but it's handled exceptionally poorly. In something like Gauntlet Legends, you can all run in different directions until the camera reaches a maximum zoom-out, leaving players to determine together which direction they'll travel in. In many Lego games, the screen will dynamically split, allowing two players to travel apart, then un-split the screen when they return together. But in Bluey, the camera picks one player seemingly at random to prioritize. It's not always P1, and it's not always whoever's closest to the middle of the screen, but the chosen player is granted agency, while any remaining players get auto-returned like a drone that's lost connection to the remote control. This becomes a huge problem when any obstacle lies between the returning character and the other player, as you cannot alter your course until you're within arm's length of your teammate. It's busted!
It's also got that frustrating audio thing that licensed games always seem to do, where the volume levels are all over the place, and when multiple characters speak at the same time, there's no reduction in gain, so the volume suddenly quadruples when the family shouts "Yeah!" together. WHY IS THIS SUCH A CONSISTENT ISSUE
2 Comments
That's a good point! I honestly keep forgetting you can do that
Werty800
4 months ago