Party Planet Review (Switch) - ExtremeGamer's Blog

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ExtremeGamer's Blog

Party Planet Review (Switch)

Posted on December 6, 2017 at 07:30 AM.

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It's a Party...on the go!

Party Planet continues a long tradition of party type games releasing for consoles early in their lifespan. Developers see this as a quick way to get a game into the hands of consumers as they are clamoring for new games so releasing a package of mini-games hopes to grab the non-hardcore gamer and sell some copies. So how does Party Planet stack up in this regard?

Overall, it's a fun game. The ability to play all the games on the go anywhere is a major plus.The big gripe right away is that the game advertises 30 games but more than half are locked at the start. You need to play through the games to get higher scores and unlock the rest of the titles. Two to three games unlock each rank you move up. The games range from single player only games to up to 4 player local games. There's a great scoreboard feature that keeps track of each player's high score and progress, tied to the profiles on your Switch. There's no online leaderboards or online of any sort here, it's strictly couch play.

Some of the games did little for me, but others were a ton of fun, especially if you're playing with a group (which I recommend). I played the title with my 2 kids for 90% of the playtime so far. While you can play all 30 single player, 18 of them are made for multiplayer. That's truly where the hilarity comes in and the fun is had. Super Vegan Anaconda is boring solo, but with 3-4 snakes on the screen, we were all laughing the entire time competing to be the high score. I would say the same thing about Mystical Totem, Bouncing Fish and Alien Balloonists (Balloon Fight/Joust rip off). They were just okay solo, but with others playing with you, it had that "just one more game" feeling to see who's the best. Hours flew by playing the game and I only could wish more than 18 games were multiplayer when it was all said and done.

Solo games like Double Dodo Breakout had my brain exploding. Not that it was too difficult, but the controls were just downright brain melting. For kids, they played that one for a few seconds and moved on.

The progression though the "planet" is my big complaint. I wanted to dive into any of the games right away, not be forced to play games that I maybe don't care as much about to unlock better ones later on. I can see this leading to a lot of frustration and putting the game down early for some. Which is a shame, because for a game that's filled with essentially flash type mini-games, it's well done. Party Planet has a great presentation of the "board" and games, scores, and overall feel. I can understand the thought behind making you work for the unlocked games and forcing you to play all the games, but I also saw my kids get quickly bored of the original games. I had fortunately already unlocked many for our multiplayer sessions, but in having them go solo on the game, I saw them reaching for another game rather quickly as they lost interest. The good thing is, almost every day they ask to play this game as a family, it's definitely a keeper in that regard.

My only other issue is the price, $40 seems a little steep for what we have here. I feel if this game was $20 it would be one of the easier to recommend games of the year for the Switch, especially for anyone with kids or people who host parties. It has that Mario Party vibe until we get a true Mario Party title. Bring your Switch and Party Planet to Granny's house on Christmas night and have fun with the family.

Score - 6.5/10 (Copy was provided by the publisher for review purposes)