Review: Pocoyo Party – PS5, PS4

We’ve got a review for the parents out there looking for ways to keep their younglings entertained, so we’re looking at the newly released Pocoyo Party – a multiplayer game aimed at kids. Is it worth a go, or will it end in a temper tantrum? Find out in our review.

Pocoyo Party is a multiplayer game that gives players a few different mini-games to play, though they’re not strictly multiplayer as you can play alone. The handful of games are really simple and range from racing to fishing to cleaning windows, all as Pocoyo and his chums.

The story behind the game is that Evil Alien has nicked off with a bunch of party invitations and he’s lost them in the mini-games. You play the mini-games and progress through their levels to earn the party invitations. It’s simple stuff to throw a blanket over why Pocoyo and the gang are doing what they’re doing. It’s not Shakespeare and it doesn’t need to be. In fact, it wouldn’t matter if it was on the same level as the famous bard’s most revered stories because the gameplay is absolute pants.
The majority of the games use the DualShock 4/DualShock 5 motion capabilities, meaning you’ll need to tilt the controller the right way during the dancing game, turn it up and down to cast a line in the fishing game, and so on. The idea is nice but the execution is completely off and considering that this is a game aimed at small kids – and bear in mind that Pocoyo is aimed at kids between 18 months and 4 years – and the motion control centric gameplay suddenly feels 100% out of place.

You can’t rely on a kid to be able to keep hold of a controller without flinging it at the TV, and you can expect kids to be able to adjust to the nuances of a motion-controlled game, especially when the implementation is so poor. In the window cleaning mini-game, I had to roll the controller over in my hands to move the sponge up or down – not something a 4-year-old is likely to figure out. I know this because I asked my boy, Charlie, who just turned 5, and his assessment of the game was this:
“It’s OK. I like Pocoyo but this game is a little bit rubbish. Can I play Bugsnax now?”

So, from the mouth of an actual child – this game is not very fun, and I’m inclined to concur with the reviewer-in-training. It’s not a fun game and I can’t rightly recommend this to any parent looking to play some fun games with their kids. The mini-games are poor, the controls are almost broken, and the usual Pocoyo charm is lost. The only real highlight is that you can unlock episodes of Pocoyo to watch through the game, but you do have to play the game to unlock them… So, yeah, even the highlight is not such a great highlight. Poor Pocoyo.