Fling to the Finish review

It’s that time of year where everything feels a little lacklustre. The days are long, dark, and bitterly cold, and your December pay-packet has to last you until the 61st of January. If you, like me, dearly miss bickering with your Grandma over whether or not you can play another plus four card on top of a plus four card in your annual festive Uno tournament, boy, have I got just the pick-me-up for you!

Take a moment to imagine a cooperative party game where tenuous friendships and ever so slightly janky physics come together at a frankly ludicrous speed. Add a jaunty, up-tempo Spotify playlist for a five year old’s birthday party, before finally dropping a box of melted Crayola crayons over the whole damn lot. That’s it! You’ve got Fling to the Finish down to a tee.

This adorable co-op racer takes a simple idea of attaching two cutesy characters with a restrictive length of durable elastic, then chucking them downhill, careening through gaudy obstacle courses, littered with cacti, pinball bumpers, explosive barrels and much more, in a frantic and often a little frustrating dash to the finish. Via polite communication or thinly veiled threats (whichever works best for you), you must work together to dodge all adversity thrown before you before bouncing your way to the finish.

The core gameplay is a seemingly straightforward affair. You and your partner each control your respective cutesy characters, manoeuvring them through obstacle strewn levels. The fling mechanic itself involves stretching your rubbery band away from your partner, who will then choose when to press a button to fire you up, up, and away. It’s this cooperative tension that lies at the heart of the game, leading to some genuine laugh out loud moments as you are both suddenly flung into the sky, out of control, wondering just how the heck you’re going to survive your current predicament.

With options for local or on-line cooperative play, there’s also a slightly masochistic shared control option, with you and your partner each grabbing half of the controller, wrestling it between you, as bicker about who’s going to go first across that gaping chasm. Just make sure that you’re smelling fresh with this up close and personal control method.

Whilst you roll, jump, grab, and fling your way around, the elastic length connecting you to your ex-friend becomes a double-edged sword, saving you from deadly falls one moment, or hampering jumps as it gets wrapped around playground equipment or minecarts the next, causing your untimely yet often amusing deaths. Despite this, Fling to the Finish never feels overtly punishing, with you only being sent back to a checkpoint from only moments before, ready for another attempt.

From what at first can seem like a short and sweet “story” mode completed in just a couple of hours (your skill level depending), you can feel free to stretch out the length of your playtime with one of the various modes on offer. From remixes of the level you just bombed your way through to multi-coloured hidden duck hunts, races against UFOs to gold coin collectathons: there is more on offer here than just attempting to time trial against previous best efforts.

There’s an overall feel that is at moments reminiscent of Rick and Morty, Mario Kart 8, Fall Guys and even the 3D Mario series as a whole, with obstacles only making a one-time-only appearance, before being jettisoned for another to take its place. The bold and bright art style bursts with colour, offering adorable characters such as worms, squirrels, sheep, and even an appearance from another game series protagonist (which I won’t spoil here), each with their own unique style, with further options as unlockable extras using an in-game currency, as well as new banners to adorn your screens, offering a touch of customisation for those fashion aficionados out there. Combine this with a delightful soundtrack offering a heady mix of sea shanties, bouncy pop tunes, and annoyingly catchy melodies, and you just can’t help but crack a smile during your time in this vibrant world.

I’ll admit that Fling to the Finish is not all fluffy clouds and rainbows, though. The moment to moment bouncing around can get a little repetitive, but the sporadic nuggets of inspiration shown in each level just about tempers this. The single player experience on offer here can also get a tad frustrating but it’s clear that this is a game designed with co-op in mind. Controlling two rolling balls at once, as they bob and weave around each other, whilst using triggers and bumpers to stick and fling at the same time, dodging thrown spears as you roll across a TNT strewn wooden bridge can prove to be mental arithmetic that frankly I’m incapable of.

Online modes feature you racing against up to seven further teams of two, bashing and bumping your way to the fastest finish. As you can probably imagine, this can soon turn into absolute mayhem with balls bouncing all over the place and obstacles being thrown around the screen at a furious pace.

Fling to the Finish is at its best when this jolly jape is played with friends, and I’ll happily recommend that you break this out at your next family get-together. A fun physics game that caters for pretty much all skill levels, I defy anyone not to enjoy their time with it. After all, who doesn’t want to see Auntie Sue sulking grumpily in the corner after getting her balls caught on a roundabout? You’ll laugh. You’ll cry. You’ll hurl.