Foamstars shoots for Splatoon, but its style gets in the way

Square Enix’s new third-person shooter foamstarWhich pits teams of four players against each other in bubble-slathered battles, it appears to be the company’s take on Nintendo’s popular ink-shooter series, Splatoon.

As part of Summer Game Fest, it’s time to get hands-on with the game, and there’s good news: The format of the matches introduces an enjoyable twist that leads to exciting competition. There’s also bad news: fighting bubbles isn’t the same as Gloopy Ink – and the gameplay suffers because of it.

general basis of foamstar Easy to understand and jump into. To win a match, your team must kill any member 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 them in order to win the game.

Similar to the Splatoon games, you can spray the arena—locations include glitzy, Las Vegas-style clubs—with your team-colored foam and surf freely around it. Certain skill attacks and bubbles can be shot in the same spot to create stacks of bubbles which will give you a higher vantage point to shoot (or be shot at). Each character, a mix of cartoony figurines and influencers, has two different skill attacks; For example, the pink-pigtailed dill can throw a grenade and perform a twisting leap through the air that emits bubbles. Different characters have different skills, so a character like Penn Gwyn is more suited to long-range sniping while Rev Breaker can cover the map with loads of foam.

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Image: Square Enix

Image: Square Enix

The match format is a welcome twist that will probably be most enjoyable for solo players who want the thrill of taking on a match hard. The star player bears the brunt of the pressure late in the game and can turn the tide of the fight in dramatic fashion. At one point it looked like my team was headed for an easy win after getting seven skills in a row, but ended up losing the match after a star player from the other team escaped from us. After chasing them, our focus turned to… staying alive.

For such a lovely subject, I had to fight foamstarWhen it came to the heat of battle. Bubbles popped a lot, making me oblivious to the actual effects of my bubbles and weapons. Generally, close-range shooting felt easy to pull off, but anything at longer range felt like shooting in the dark. The thickness of the bubbles crowded the screen as they piled up instead of just covering the map. Often, the bubbles appeared to be taller than my character and obscured them.

Image: Square Enix

Image: Square Enix

The game has a mechanic where if your character dies, they turn into a rolling ball of foam. At this point, either your opponent needs to surf into you to kill you, or your partner can revive you. It’s a fun mechanic in theory, but in the chaos of a match, once again visual confusion ensues. Down-but-not-out characters that look like foam balls are hard to pick out among the visual noise, despite being marked by neon signs that say “chance.” The revive mechanic added another element to an otherwise crowded screen and slowed down the rapid pace of combat. In the end, I ended up leaving several people behind in that foam-ball state because I couldn’t find them.

foamstar’ angry The format should still make it a welcome addition to any player who doesn’t own a Nintendo Switch. The fast-paced and unpredictable nature of the matches led to thrilling scenarios, and the game played without any major difficulties or bugs – which was impressive considering you have to splash and navigate foam in quick-changing matches. However, as someone who regularly plays other popular shooters like shed 3 and zero-build Fortnitei can’t see myself switching foamstar anytime soon. The gameplay was a bit too cumbersome and visually confusing to feel like a dependable replacement for stronger shooters for now.

foamstar Coming to PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5. Square Enix hasn’t announced a release date yet.