PAW Patrol: Adventure City Calls [Xbox]
Drakhar Studio’s PAW Patrol: Adventure City Calls sees the pups on a mission to rescue Adventure City, after they discover the plans that Mayor Humdinger has in store for the city. Each level starts back at the PAW Patrol HQ, with available missions shown on the hub computer. Once selected, Ryder will explain the mission and call out the relevant pups for the job.
Taking control of each of the pups on a variety of missions across Adventure City, you’ll have different tasks to complete, minigames to play and vehicles to drive. Every mission starts out with the required pups taking a wander through the city to collect snacks, which is a little funny when you think about it. We need to get to the scene as quickly as possible! - but we’re gonna park about a mile away and then walk to grab some snacks! There will be two pups required for each mission, and you can swap between them by pressing X, although there isn’t any difference playing one versus another, aside from when their relevant mission part comes up (such as putting out fires as Marshall, or grapple to higher areas with Chase.
Visually very loyal to the animated series and film that has been released alongside the game, each of the pups look spot on. Ryder, their human leader, looks a little… off? And at times, there were quite a few texture pop-in issues, but overall, the appearance was decent, if a bit samey. Most levels follow a very similar theme, and don’t have a lot of variety to them, with most taking place in a generic linear path through the city. Within the menus, the design choices are a little odd at times. Within the Minigames menu, the different games you can play are all titled in different ways, with some in full caps, some with all the words joined by dashes and in lowercase, and some with just the starting letter of each word capitalised. Music is very typically PAW Patrol-like, with a few different tunes as you progress, though some of these become a little repetitive as there’s not a whole lot of variation.
Controls are pretty standard, although everything feels unnecessarily slow - which makes trudging through the levels and Minigames feel quite tedious. Again, I know this is primarily a kids game, but when my own kids are bored by it, it makes you wonder what age it is really aimed at (as my youngest is 6). It feels like it’s possibly intended as a ‘first game’ for kids to get into, but that feels like the developers really missed a beat - especially when compared to the previous PAW Patrol titles. Vehicle segments feel awkward and clunky, particularly with Skye’s copter - it seems to clip balloons very easily, even if you’ve moved into the correct lane in plenty of time. Likewise, switching lanes in Marshall’s fire truck feels very stuttery, and can cause you to easily miss the very first treat in a row of five just from being so damn hard to move.
There are a bunch of Minigames to play, such as Time Trials, where you drive various vehicles as each of the pups to collect treats, but nothing is actually timed so why call it a time trial?; Collect-them-all, which gives you a limited amount of time to collect all of the available treats in an area; Obstacle Race, as described; and Pup Pup Boogie, a very lacklustre dance mat style mini game, where you must tap buttons in time with them passing through the green bar - however it doesn’t even really follow a beat so it leaves a lot to be desired. Simple enough for kids, but doesn’t really offer much of a challenge. It doesn’t really look like it had planned for anyone to go over 10,000 on the score either, because as soon as you do, the 5th digit drops down into the next line, obscuring the multiplier. I hit the high score on my first attempt and it took a hilariously long time to add the points at the end (I know I could have skipped, but it was just too awkwardly funny not to) and skipping means it doesn’t even tell you what the score you got was!
The snacks that are spread all through each level must be snapped up by the pups as they will count towards your level completion total (which requires 100% for a Gold Medal!). I admit, I got a little cocky with these as I thought ‘well how hard can it be?’ due to them flowing in a near-constant line of treats, and with this being a kids’ game at its core… and then I discovered I’d missed 20 treats on my first attempt at the first level… I also ran into an unbelievable number of bugs and glitches in my time playing, with Chase constantly bounce-twitching in one level, and after completing a Minigame it just took me to the next level but stuck me looking at a tree, with no option but to exit back to the main menu. Treats clip through floors, and pups often get stuck behind barriers, pinging back into view shortly after (and this is an issue in both single player and co-op). Overall, there’s a lot wrong with PAW Patrol: Adventure City Calls, which is honestly pretty disappointing, as this is one that could have been a lot of fun for kids, and at the price of £34.99 on Xbox, it’s a lot of money to pay for what it is.
In the end, we decided to give PAW Patrol: Adventure City Calls the Collecting Asylum rating of 4/10.
Have you played PAW Patrol: Adventure City Calls yet? What did you think of it?
Let us know in the comments below!
- V x
Thank you to Outright Games for the PAW Patrol: Adventure City Calls Xbox review code!
