I’m not sure if it’s better or worse that Panic decided to start with a pretty weak title for the Playdate’s first free season 1 game. If you remember those McDonalds happy meal toys that were little handheld digital soccer goalie games in the late 2000s, Whitewater Wipeout very much reminds me of them. They’re both small, short, sports based games that rely on providing 1-5 minute sessions rather than a prolonged experience. I don’t want to get ahead of myself, as I am writing this review after having already played a handful of other Playdate games, but I think a couple of other titles do this so much better and more addictively than WW does.
Unlike Root Bear, Snak, (two Playdate games I’ll review soon) and even the soccer McDonalds toy, Whitewater Wipeout is less about precision practice and random chances resulting in strategy re-evaluations and more about doing one single thing the exact same every single time. I’ll give small props that it relies solely on the console’s crank, but finding the sweet spot in how many times you can spin around in a circle before you wipeout from the waves or landing upside down gets old fast. It’s a game about performing simple surfing tricks as you flee an approaching wave, so why can I only do one move? Why would I want to play the game any more than to understand what it’s about when that entails me having to sustain a single time-limit unbound run by flipping over and over and over with no breakup of monotony or increasing of stakes. Whitewater Wipeout isn’t bad because the mechanics aren’t sound or premise uninteresting. It’s bad because it offers little to latch onto past its elevator pitch and doesn’t stand out from other five minute pick-up-and-play games.
Unlike Root Bear, Snak, (two Playdate games I’ll review soon) and even the soccer McDonalds toy, Whitewater Wipeout is less about precision practice and random chances resulting in strategy re-evaluations and more about doing one single thing the exact same every single time. I’ll give small props that it relies solely on the console’s crank, but finding the sweet spot in how many times you can spin around in a circle before you wipeout from the waves or landing upside down gets old fast. It’s a game about performing simple surfing tricks as you flee an approaching wave, so why can I only do one move? Why would I want to play the game any more than to understand what it’s about when that entails me having to sustain a single time-limit unbound run by flipping over and over and over with no breakup of monotony or increasing of stakes. Whitewater Wipeout isn’t bad because the mechanics aren’t sound or premise uninteresting. It’s bad because it offers little to latch onto past its elevator pitch and doesn’t stand out from other five minute pick-up-and-play games.