Waddle Home is a puzzle game about penguins who have taken a spaceship to another planet which is inhabited by aliens. Unfortunately, they get captured by the extra-terrestrials and require your help to break free and return to their ship so that they can – ahem – Waddle Home.
You begin by releasing the penguins from a cage, and they then waddle around by themselves before they hit an obstacle which causes them to turn to their right. Therefore the puzzles require you to raise and lower blocks, avoid the aliens, and hit buttons to open doors in order to guide the penguins in the direction of their flying saucer. It's a very simple concept which doesn't really develop into anything more difficult throughout the game. Even though buttons and enemies are thrown into the mix later on, the gameplay still feels very simplistic.
The game is level-based with a total of 40 stages, each one lasting a maximum of two minutes on our first play through. For those not good with numbers, this means the entirety of the game can be finished in about an hour. There isn't much point in replaying the levels either, as there are no leaderboards, and although there are three eggs in every level to collect, there's no reason to pick them up – they don't unlock any bonus levels or items.
The controls make the gameplay uber-rudimentary, with the DualShock 4 acting as a pointer. You're able to interact with the world by pointing the controller and selecting objects using the X button. You simply point and click to move blocks up and down; other than that you can watch your penguins waddle home. The only other control allows you to spin the iceberg with the trigger giving you a better view, making virtual reality totally redundant as you can just rotate the level rather than having to look around.
Conclusion
Waddle Home is a below par puzzle game at best, and the addition of VR fails to change that. The repetitive gameplay, simplicity of the puzzles, and the sheer lack of content shows that this game was rushed out for launch. P-p-p-p-pick up something better for your PlayStation VR headset.
Comments 8
Wait, this can be played without the VR Headset? When my kids were looking at it, I was going to purchase it for them, but saw the VR at the bottom that said it was just for VR. Can anyone tell me if this is true or false, and how I can tell which games are just for VR and which ones can be used with the controller instead?
@JLPick A VR headset is required to play it, it cannot be played without it.
Poultry attempt. Hadn't realised it was VR until the end of the review. Shame you can't swat the penguins around and force them into a deep fryer
@JLPick Yeah, I guess we're going to have to make this clearer moving forwards.
Nothing will beat Penguin Land.
Looks incredibly boring.
@Simon_Fitzgerald Man this sounds terrible, glad we could pull you into a game of something good last night!
@themcnoisy yeah it was needed after this
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