Review: #Funtime – PS4

First of all, what a bloody name for a game. Social media has gone too far, and these hashtags are invading our everyday lives. #firstworldproblems
#Funtime is an arcade twin-stick shooter that will be instantly familiar to anybody who skulked around arcades in the 80s and 90s. Oh, and played Geometry Wars in the 2000s and 2010s. So, most players will recognise the concept, and that’s good because it means when you sit down and boot the game up, you’ll know what to expect.
But you won’t. Not really. Because #Funtime does things same-same, but different. Yes, it takes the proven formula of Geometry Wars, and yes, it hurts your eyes and your head after half an hour with the violent explosions of colour, but it has its own twists to stop the legal team of Geometry Wars bashing in the doors and demanding some royalties.

The set up is this: you’re a space ship thing and you move with the left stick and fire with the right stick. The right stick is also your aiming stick. This is typically referred to by us nerds as “twin-stick shooting.” Levels are full of colourful shapes that, if touched, will kill you, so you need to shoot them, avoid them, and trap them using your given tools. It sounds simple, and it starts simple, but it does get tricky, and quickly.
There are several different ways to play, ranging from survival mode to races that take you on deadly assault courses. Another gimmick has been thrown into the mix with the use of colour trails. Pressing one of the face buttons will change your ship’s colour, and it’ll also leave a trail behind you, which is deadly to enemies of that colour. So tapping the triangle button will turn you green, the cross button blue, and so on.
It’s a challenge in itself to remember that this is a useful tool, and for a long time I just didn’t use it unless it was a part of a particular level’s task, but I eventually wisened up to how it can be used effectively, and soon I was hitting the face buttons like a pro.

Levels are typically contained, but some are a little more open, and these weren’t the most fun to play. Not because the gameplay is bad, but because it’s difficult to read the screen with so much going on and without clear boundaries. One level, a throwback to the classic Asteroids games, takes place in space with… asteroids. This sounds nice, but in reality, it was a nuisance and I hated every moment of it. I’d bump into asteroids that I couldn’t see and get stuck on the geometry, resulting in me dying and losing.
The regular levels themselves also suffer from readability issues, too, but not to the same extent as the one I just mentioned. Of course, for some this may not be an issue, but for me, it did make the game difficult to play at times, and I did get a bit frustrated to have some good runs cut short because I couldn’t tell where my ship was in the mess of colours.
Another problem I found was that the camera seems a bit too zoomed in. The camera could have done with being a bit further back, giving the player a better view of the battlefield. As it is, it’s just a touch too close, and it makes it all the more difficult to stay alive longer when you can’t plan your moves because you can’t see what’s coming off-screen.

The good news is that death and losing isn’t the be-all-end-all of #Funtime. Fail a level? No bother, just move onto the next level and come back later to see if you can earn some stars on the level you’ve failed. And of course, there are upgrades for your ship that can be bought with the points you earn during gameplay. These upgrades help a lot and they’re necessary if you want to achieve anything resembling a respectable score, and it adds another layer to the game, which doesn’t hurt at all.
#Funtime is an alright game. And that’s it. It’s not going to be having Geometry Wars levels of success, because it’s really not on the same level as that monster of a game. But, for what it is, it’s alright, and if you like these old-school arcade games, you’ll probably have a #goodtime.

#Funtime PS4 Review

• 6.5/10
  Overall - Good - 6.5/10

6.5/10

Summary

#Funtime is a decent little arcade shooter that’s trying to step into the void left by Geometry Wars. It isn’t filling those boots anytime soon, but it’s still a decent effort. For fans of old-school arcade games, #Funtime will give you a #goodtime.