Foamstars review

We’ve seen plenty of live service games come and go over the years. Some arrive to substantial fanfare then get forgotten about, while others connect with the audience and linger for a long time. Unfortunately, it’s the former that tends to happen more often, and Foamstars will more than likely disappear by the end of the year. It’s not that it’s poorly executed, and I even had a bit of fun at times. The biggest problem for me is that it fails to appeal to me, despite trying my best to connect with it.

Through forced wacky characters and dialogue, hideously pricey microtransactions, and chaotic gameplay that ended up frustrating me far more than it should, Foamstars isn’t going to appeal to many people. I’m not entirely sure who it’s trying to appeal to either. It’s loud and brash in the way that those hyper teen YouTubers are, even obnoxious at times. While it could be perceived as a game aimed at younger people, it can be far too difficult at times to work out what is going on.

That’s not to say there are some smart ideas at play, even if some of them feel like they’re straight from Nintendo’s Splatoon. Instead of covering environments in ink, you’ll be spaffing foam all over the place, whether to try and ‘chill’ the enemy (taking them out) or alter the environment, matches quickly fill up with the stuff. The action is frantic almost all the time, often leading to feeling a lack of control over what’s happening, but as time goes on you’ll start to work out when and how to make the most out of your bubbly fluid.

By shooting foam at an opponent, it’ll cover them until they’re unable to move. You can then slide into them to chill them and take them out. Alternatively, if you get covered in foam, one of your teammates can slide into you to save you. When running around, you’ll move relatively slowly, however, when your team’s foam is on the ground, you can slide across it on a surfboard that allows you to travel much faster, Layering up foam will also let you build ramps and areas to hide, although it can take a long time to really see any benefits of doing the latter.

There are three main modes in PvP, and they each try to offer something different. Smash the Star sees teams of four try and chill their opponents, and once one achieves seven of them, a member of the other team becomes a star. In order to win, you must take out the star player, however, they’ll gain more health so it might take a little longer to become victorious. It’s perhaps the best mode on offer as it’s the closest to a deathmatch you’re going to get. Rubber Duck Party sees both teams try to gain control of a giant duck and move it into enemy territory.

If one of your players can mount the duck’s head and dance, it’ll move faster while leaving the player strutting their stuff more vulnerable. Finally, Happy Bath Survival sees two players try and chill each other while the other two teammates stand outside the arena and fire down foam to gain an advantage for those trying to chill, allowing for ways to strategize in interesting ways. All three modes don’t tend to last for very long, and while it can take a minute or two for players to find new matches, there’s a lot of waiting around. There is a single-player mode that lets you take each Hero and participate in wave-based missions, but they’re all similar and failed to engage me in their stories.

Perhaps the most frustrating thing for me is the way the wackiness is forced upon you. The environments are perfectly serviceable, but the dialogue grates on you in almost every sentence uttered. And then there’s the ridiculously priced cosmetics that might make a semblance of sense if it was a free-to-play title, but after it leaves PS Plus in March, people are actually going to have to buy it. The Battle Pass gives players some average at best items, but it’s the different outfits for the heroes that are more expensive than actual games are costing on the PlayStation Network.

If you’re struggling to find anything else to play, or are looking for a kid-friendly version of Overwatch, you might like this. It has some genuinely smart moments in its matches, but more often than not it’s far too chaotic that strategic. The characters are annoying, and the voice acting is so annoying, and while the environments are colourful and pretty enough, they don’t engage like many of the other, much more enjoyable live service titles that are already on the market.