Game: Slide Stars
Genre: Action, Platformer, Racing
System: Nintendo Switch (also on PS4 and Xbox One)
Developer|Publisher: Triangle Studios | Orange One
Age Rating: EU 7+ | US Teen
Price: UK £35.99 | EU €39,99 | US $39.99
Release Date: November 10th, 2020
Review code provided with many thanks to MMPR
Bring Back the Summer
Its Autumn time but I guess it’s never too late to get into that summer feeling. Slide Stars is a game where you play as an internet celebrity, pick a ride like a flamingo or banana and race around summery designed water slide tracks.
I guess I’ll disclose here that I had no idea who any of the 20 internet celebrities featured in this game were. Have no fear though as the game is happy to provide bios and even links to each of their many social media accounts, like for Brent Rivera, Doctor Mike and Holly H. Sorry folks but you’ve not gained an additional follower today. But that doesn’t mean we can’t have some fun with this weird water slide adventure.
Race to the Finish
The controls are fairly simple you move about with the left stick and you hold the ‘A’ button and release to jump. The goal of each level is to reach the exit in one internet celebrity piece. If you hit a hazard or fall on the track your hero will ragdoll out in a humorous display. Your character feels floaty enabling you to do flips in the air to gain more likes and hearts from the fictitious internet followers watching you. Gain enough points and you can unlock new routes in the levels potentially finding secrets exits to hidden levels. If you make a mistake you usually restart at a nearby checkpoint.
The levels feel pretty basic in design, most of which blend together making it difficult to tell one apart from another. You often have to avoid hazards like crocodiles and monkeys that throw dynamite. You know the usual things you encounter at a water park!
The game only features just over twenty levels making it incredibly short. Additionally, there are only two-level designs. One being this summery Aztec park and the other an American Swampland, the later being a remarkably odd choice since you’re racing around in what appears to be sewage.
Get the Medals
When you finish a level you can gain up to three medals, depending on what mini objective you achieved. Just finishing the level alone will always net you one medal with an extra two obtained by finishing the level in a set time or completing it without taking any damage. You’re consistently drip-fed new content like a new playable character, outfits for said characters and rides which range from inflatable flamingos, logs, giant coins or sharks. Rides that you stand on tend to be easier to control whilst sitting on others like the hot sauce bottle tend to be more cumbersome. By the way, the hot sauce bottle literally leaks hot sauce as you travel through the level, someone might want to put a cork in that.
Two Player Mode Attached
The entire game can be enjoyed with two players but after playing through this mode it’s clear this was added after the fact, as things do get a little messy with a second player in tow. When a second player runs ahead of another for some reason the game always seems to favour the player running behind as opposed to the other way round. You might be ahead and making your way through a tricky platform section only to be ballooned back to the other player, meaning you have to repeat the horrid process again.
While messy and poorly implemented I will say my wife and I did have a lot of laughs playing this game together. Sometimes due to the weird glitches, we encountered like one player being catapulted into the sky or just the bizarre ragdoll physics when a character falls over.
It’s How Much?!
I was all ready to give Star Slides a positive rating but then I saw the price tag attached to this title. I somewhat wonder if the high price tag has something to do with the internet celebrities attached to this project. A cheaper game that features unknown playable human or even animal characters would make for an easy impulse buy recommendation. But at such an enormous price tag for a game that feels like a decent mobile title ported to consoles makes it hard to recommend even if you potentially adore the celebrities featured in it.
Slide on by
Star Slides is a short title to play alone or have some unintentional laughs with a second player. It’s silly fun that would have been easy to recommend at a cheaper price point. But since that’s not that case here, I would say save your money and slide on to something else worth your time. At least it doesn’t have microtransactions, so that’s good.
Final Verdict: I’m Not Sure