Square Enix’s Splatoon-esque Foamstars has style, maybe too much of it

Square Enix’s new third-person shooter foam starswhere teams of four players go head-to-head in bubble-filled battles, appears to be the company’s version of Nintendo’s popular ink shooter series, Splatoon.

As part of the Summer Game Fest, Polygon was able to try the game for itself, and there’s good news: the format of the games brings a fun twist that leads to an exciting competition. There’s bad news, too: Fighting with bubbles doesn’t pack the same punch as sticky ink – and gameplay suffers as a result.

The general premise of foam stars is easy to understand and easy to understand. To win a game, your team must kill all members of the opposing team seven times. Once your team gets seven kills, the other team’s best player becomes the “Star Player” and you must kill him to win the game.

Similar to the Splatoon games, you can spray the arena – venues include glittering Las Vegas-style clubs – with foam your team’s color and glide gently over it. Certain skill attacks and bubbles can be fired in the same spot to build up a pile of bubbles, which then gives you a higher vantage point to shoot (or shoot down). A mix of comic book idols and influencers, each character has two distinct ability attacks; For example, the pink-braided Soa can throw a grenade and do a whirling leap through the air, emitting bubbles. Different characters have different abilities, so a character like Pen Gwyn is more suited to long-range sniping, while Rave Breaker can cover the map with a lot of foam.

Image: Square Enix

Image: Square Enix

The match format is a welcome twist that’s likely to be best enjoyed by solo players looking for the thrill of a tough match. The star player is most pressured in the late game and can turn the tide of the fight in dramatic fashion. Eventually, my team seemed to be able to pull off an easy win after earning seven consecutive skills, but ended up losing the game after a star player from the other team dodged us. As we hunted them, we lost focus on staying alive.

I had trouble with such a sweet theme foam star‘s visuals when it came to the heat of the moment. The bubbles bounced around a lot, so I didn’t really feel the actual impact of my bubbles and weapons. In general, it felt like shooting at close range was easily accomplished, but anything beyond that felt like shooting in the dark. The thickness of the bubbles filled the screen as they piled up and not just covered the map. Often the bubbles seemed larger than my figure and obscured it.

Image: Square Enix

Image: Square Enix

The game features a mechanic where when your character dies, they turn into a rolling ball of foam. At this point, your opponent must either invade you to kill you, or your teammate can revive you. It’s a fun mechanic in theory, but once again caused visual confusion in the chaos of a match. The decrepit but unstretched characters, who look like balls of foam, are difficult to spot in the visual noise, though they’re identified by neon signs that say “Chance.” The revive mechanic added another element to an otherwise crowded screen and merely slowed down the fast pace of combat. I ended up leaving several people in this foam ball state because I couldn’t find them.

foam stars frenzied The format should still make it a welcome addition for any gamer who doesn’t own a Nintendo Switch. The fast-paced and unpredictable nature of the matches led to exciting scenarios, and the game played without any major difficulties or bugs – which was impressive considering that fast-paced matches involve juggling spraying and navigating foam. However, as someone who regularly plays other popular shooters Splatoon 3 and zero build Fourteen daysI can’t imagine switching foam stars sometime soon. The gameplay was just a little too unwieldy and visually confusing to act as a safe substitute for stronger shooters for the time being.

foam stars will be released for PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5. Square Enix has not yet announced a release date.