Took me a while to get round to playing the game that stood out the most during the PS5 reveal conference but happy to say it was worth the wait.
The Snax are the highlight here - there are some inspired design decisions and even with the overall number being padded out by colour variations, relatively few of them felt cheaply done. It's genuinely amazing how much work a pair of googly eyes can do to make them look so appealing and fun. There are also very few words in the history of video games as fun to say as Scoopy Banoopy.
The cast of Grumpuses also stood out, along with their own specific anxieties and eccentricities. Each character has a set of side-missions which are okay (more on that in a second), but the reward of learning more about them, their personalities and relationships made what could be quite tedious at times worth the effort.
I do wish the act of actually interacting with and catching Bugsnax was a bit more interesting though. It starts off fine, with some simple puzzles to solve as to how to get them into the right position but it never really progresses much further than that. Once you receive a certain trap, most other become obsolete and you're barely challenged in how to catch any new creature you come across, barring a handful of exceptions - hopefully this is something that's tackled in the upcoming DLC.
But as I sit here and contemplate my playthrough, those frustrations barely register - the game became a meme during that initial reveal but it's anything but, with tender stories and explorations of interpersonal relationships hidden underneath those admittedly goofy looking googly eyes. Definitely worth a playthrough.
The Snax are the highlight here - there are some inspired design decisions and even with the overall number being padded out by colour variations, relatively few of them felt cheaply done. It's genuinely amazing how much work a pair of googly eyes can do to make them look so appealing and fun. There are also very few words in the history of video games as fun to say as Scoopy Banoopy.
The cast of Grumpuses also stood out, along with their own specific anxieties and eccentricities. Each character has a set of side-missions which are okay (more on that in a second), but the reward of learning more about them, their personalities and relationships made what could be quite tedious at times worth the effort.
I do wish the act of actually interacting with and catching Bugsnax was a bit more interesting though. It starts off fine, with some simple puzzles to solve as to how to get them into the right position but it never really progresses much further than that. Once you receive a certain trap, most other become obsolete and you're barely challenged in how to catch any new creature you come across, barring a handful of exceptions - hopefully this is something that's tackled in the upcoming DLC.
But as I sit here and contemplate my playthrough, those frustrations barely register - the game became a meme during that initial reveal but it's anything but, with tender stories and explorations of interpersonal relationships hidden underneath those admittedly goofy looking googly eyes. Definitely worth a playthrough.