Foamstars: PS5 Review

Developed by Toylogic
Published by Square Enix
Platform: PS5

Foamstars may have a spiritual forebear in Splatoon, but the latest from Square Enix is a mix of the more traditional Japanese RPG fare the studio produces and the traditional PvP shooter that's become prolific in the genre.

Stepping aside the absolutely abysmal pushing of a paid series of packs before you've even entered the arena, the game essentially equips your hero with a gun, a large amount of soapy goodness and the ability to simply go crazy.

The foam party fight is incredibly confusing, a mash of colour and blobs that makes it difficult to work out what to do straight off - so it's better to engage with Foamstars in its earlier single player format. But even that has a curse attached to it, given how much dialogue is spewed out by characters intent on interacting via text bubbles.

It's a shame because the actual mechanics of using a soapy blaster to dispatch hordes of Chocobo-like enemies as they head toward your power source to destroy it does require a bit of thinking and planning - after all, there's nothing worse than an empty shooter unable to perform.

Along with some awful puns (Bath Vegas instead of Las Vegas) Foamstars' ability to engage the lower brow is never really far from its mind, but when the game calms itself down and concentrates on its mechanics, it does offer something a little more fun that's straying away from the traditional.

But unfortunately, along with aggressive microtransactions and a penchant for pushing its crazy dialogue in your face, those moments are few and far in between. From surfing through the foam to knock out your enemies to building an unassailable wall of foam to get high, there's a crazy inventiveness here that's not quite coalesced into something that's truly memorable, sadly.

Mixing Capture the flag games with PvP, Foamstars stakes its claim - and while it's fun for a while, it's to be hoped the long term roadmap relies on more inventiveness and a little less over reliance on screeds of dialogue that's difficult to discern while playing.