We’ve known it for a long time, we’ve waited a long time, but it’s finally here. Even on PC. Two years after its next-gen release, and clearly we’re only talking about PlayStation 5, considering that it is a Sony IP. Indeed, one of the flagship mascots of this manufacturer. If initially the game was exclusive to PS5, Sony had announced that its Sackboy: A Big Adventure it would also come up PC dal October 27th. And so it was. A project that comes to the end of a long line of PlayStation exclusives then also land on PC. A purely marketing decision, to loosen Sony’s grip on the exclusivity of its IPs, as is also happening with other titles? This isn’t the best place to discuss it, as we can’t wait to share with us the results of our PC test of Sony’s quintessential stuffed mascot.
Sackboy: A Big Adventure, a game that has… some makings
For all those who have never approached this game even in the PlayStation 5 version, it is good to recap i main features of the story. As you might imagine, we are not dealing with an epic production, from a narrative point of view. However, this doesn’t mean it shouldn’t deserve your attention. Sumo Digital’s platformer gives us a corner of peace and serenity in a title devoid of adrenaline and fast pace, without twists. Ideal for spending moments of healthy fun and in peace, we can experience the return of this historical character in the videogame industry with a short but intense story (of satisfactions).
The fearsome Vex decided to invade the world of Sackboy and his friends, threatening to take away the freedom of the protagonist and all the other inhabitants. To prevent this from happening, we must immediately set out to discover five worlds very rich in levels with well-balanced difficulty. In particular, the variety of themes is appreciable, with objects to collect to collect achievements to unlock. But let’s not forget the peculiarity of this game, namely the presence of characters and objects created in cardboard, paint, fabric and many others materials to us daily.
A (more or less) smooth scrolling platformer
Instead, we come to the actual content of Sackboy: A Big Adventure and performance on PC, compared to its previous release on next-gen. At the level of gameplay, as we can imagine, we don’t have such an evolution in front of us, between levels horizontal and vertical scrolling and timed challenges and platforms to activate. The same (scarce) variety is found in the succession of enemies, gradually more powerful, but not in an excessive and prohibitive way.
But the more important question now is: Does this scrolling platformer really “run” smoothly and without problems? If clearly the content does not vary, being a port, exactly the same cannot be said of the graphic resolution and the behavior of the game engine. The graphic scaling is the result of a great job, but highlighting stuttering when starting levels, while the next game engine content is loading.
Finally, despite the major potential of the PC compared to a console, we have not seen a particular exploitation of the latter. The graphic result is in fact similar to that on PS5, also due to the nature of the game itself. Having in hand a 3D platform where the character is almost always framed from a distance and the levels are built in a relatively easy way, it is difficult for particular graphic aspects to be highlighted. Even the pace of the game itself, quite calm as mentioned above, does not bring out the 120fps we would expect.
Sackboy: A Big Adventure and its difficulties, but contained
Il difficulty levelwe already said, it turns out quite small and limited, but not limiting the enjoyment of the game. Sackboy: A Big Adventure is accessible to a wide audience, because of the easy tasks we have to perform. So let’s leave for the spheres to collect during our game sessions. We remind you that the mode in coop and with the aforementioned is also foreseen timed challenges which (finally) require a certain concentration.
Lo visual style it is the classic one of the franchise, which manages to dominate over all the rest, leaving however that the initial surprise effect risks disappearing as we progress. In terms of design however, Sackboy: A Big Adventure incorporates classic moves and special abilities of the genre.
The review of Sackboy: A Big Adventure in a nutshell
Sackboy: A Big Adventure riprende le classic features of traditional platformers, with the addition of an evident graphic cure and with good technical performances. However, the latter, compared to those seen two years ago on PlayStation 5, failed to surprise us particularly. Let’s explain ourselves better: the performances are certainly good, without particular hitches that could affect the gaming experience. In all this, however, we have not noticed that extra “quid” that we would have expected from the PC version tested on Steam.
We also would have preferred to be more involved in the game action, between interesting but overall easy to solve schemes and not too demanding boss fights. An interesting platform as a whole, which deserves to be tried and to become part of your digital libraries. After all, it’s still a game… that has makings.