Review for Sackboy: A great adventure. Game for PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5, the video game was released on 12/11/2020 The version for PlayStation 4 came out on 19/11/2020
Version for PlayStation 5 from 19/11/2020
After his debut with LittleBigPlanet on PlayStation 3 way back in 2008, the character of Sackboy was able to become almost a mascot for Sony, to the point of receiving a series of various spin-offs that saw him as the protagonist. The release of PlayStation 5 was too good an opportunity to bring back the very nice little ragman, here then Sackboy: A Great Adventure, a title developed by Sumo Digital and obviously published by Sony itself as the launch title of the new console, although it is also available for PlayStation 4.
Sackboy: A Great Adventure is a 3D platformer that sees our Sackboy struggling with Vex, an evil being who kidnaps the villagers of Sackboy to make them his slaves. It will be up to our young ragdoll hero to set out and save everyone from the evil intentions of Vex, who will hinder him along the course of the 5 worlds that make up the game.
The plot tones are clearly very light and surrounded by a lot of playful and funny dialogue, nothing is ever taken seriously, Vex himself is a very nice villain in his own way. Each cutscene is a pretext to send Sackboy from one world to another, making him pass the dozens and dozens of levels that the game offers before reaching the end.
Initial impressions are those of a very simple and undemanding platformer suitable for a very young audience who may be preparing to start playing video games recently, with the excuse of probably receiving his first console for Christmas. In reality, in the middle of the game, the game begins to become a little more complex thanks to the introduction of different mechanics and skills relegated to some levels that at least make the challenge more interesting, although the game remains absolutely within everyone's reach, thanks to the 'help especially of frequent checkpoints and rather generous accumulation of lives.
Sackboy in levels will be able to do relatively little aside jump, dodge and beat enemies with fists. From time to time he will be able to interact with the environment to hang himself on certain surfaces, use gadgets and the like, but his park moves remain the basic one of the platform base. Let's be clear, it works for what are the levels and for the variety they offer cyclically, but perhaps on this front we expected a little more.
What is not at all trivial, however, turned out to be the goal of finishing all levels 100%. In fact, each level is full of secrets to find and unlock, including bubbles to accumulate, blue Orbs, costume pieces and so on. Not all of them are exactly easy to find, many are hidden by clever camera games, while others require careful cleaning of the levels to reach very high scores. In short, if you aim for Platinum, you have to sweat that. To move between the various levels, you will have access to a sort of world map typical of 90s platformers, where you can simply choose the levels that you will gradually unlock by finishing the previous ones. To get to the boss, you tend to have to accumulate a specific number of blue Orbs hidden in the various levels. Each of them typically has 3 to 5 to find.
In the world map, you can also drop by Zom Zom to buy new clothes for the Sackboy, with which to customize him from head to toe, including the emoticons for him to do when he zooms in on him or when he poses for the photo of end of level. The costumes do not give access to any kind of power, but it is still nice to be able to access the catalogs of always different and so extravagant clothing.
Technically the game does an excellent job in faithfully representing the various surfaces of the game and the fabric with which the characters are composed, recalling the work done by Nintendo with Kirby and Yoshi in their versions of "wool". Perhaps the problem arises in the artistic direction, a bit too cyclical and repetitive in the various worlds, although the setting changes often, whether it is a forest or a glacial mountain. It lacks the twist that makes Nintendo's platformers unique and this is a bit of a shame, because Sackboy is a pretty sight when he wants and the game design sometimes does a bad job. In this regard, an honorable mention to the "rhythmic" levels, where everything moves in time, from enemies to stage effects, as well as the flow and the crossing of the level. Exciting.
For who was wondering, there is no great use of Dualsense in this Sackboy, and this is a great disappointment, since the potential to do what Astro's Playroom proposed was all there. Working on the feeling of the surfaces on which you walk, on the resistance of the triggers based on some actions that Sackboy performs, there were many things you could work on at the level of implementation of the new PS5 pad, but on balance it was limited to some feedback of the shots and when jumping. The homework homework.
Sackboy: A Great Adventure turned out to be a very nice platformer, but one that fails to shine like other excellences of the genre. The character and the universe of Sackboy is very fascinating and fun, aspects that make the adventure smooth and enjoyable for any audience, but for this reason it was legitimate to make an effort to do a little more. Surely the contents are not lacking, but you could have dared more on various fronts, both technical and playful. Certainly a perfect title to play it in joy and in company, thanks to local and online multiplayer, but which risks being immediately forgotten in favor of more attractive titles of the same genre. A missed opportunity, for a title that certainly could have its say.
► Sackboy: A Great Adventure is a Platform-Adventure type game developed by Sony and published by Sony Interactive Entertainment for PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5, the video game was released on 12/11/2020 The version for PlayStation 4 came out on 19/11/2020
Version for PlayStation 5 from 19/11/2020
