Review: Traffic Jams – PSVR (PS5, PS4)

One traffic jam you won’t mind being a part of.

There’s a game I play on my phone where I have to move aeroplanes around an airport. I have to drag my finger to draw lines to tell them where to land, where to refuel, where to get fixed, and where to take off again.

Traffic Jams is a similar kind of game but instead of drawing lines on a smudgy smartphone screen, you’re waving your hands around, signalling cars, bikes, and buses to stop so that pedestrians can safely cross the street.

Game Information
Release Date: August 26th, 2021
Developer: Little Chicken Game Company
Publisher: Vertigo Games
Availability: PSN (Digital)

[Note: Normally, you would find out video review up where that image is. Unfortunately, Traffic Jams does not allow user capture on PS4/PS5. Why? No idea. So on this occasion, there is no video. This may change in future if the game receives an update that allows video capture.]

Using the PS Move wands – you will need two to play Traffic Jams – you point at pedestrians and motorists and then you signal them to either stop, move, or move faster. Palm up is stop, while you beckon using your hand to tell them to move, and then do it faster to let them know they need to get a shift on.

The aim is to get everybody where they’re going without anybody getting annoyed at being made to wait for too long and without any crashes.

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It begins really easy with the first level being really chilled out, but by the time I was managing traffic in Amsterdam, Tokyo, and New York, my arms were working overtime and my scores were starting to suffer from the unexpected workout I was getting.

Building up combos by having happy chappys crossing the road quickly or motorists flowing fast is the quickest route to a high score, as well as the stamps needed to unlock further levels. It’s far from easy, though, and losing track of what’s going on and who’s going where is all part of the fun – and it’s really good fun!

There are only a handful of cities to play in, but they each come with three modes. There’s the normal play mode, night mode, and rush hour.

Night mode was my favourite to play with my boy, Charlie. The simple gameplay remains the same but there’s the added twist that zombies join the action. They’ll pop up out of manhole covers or be within the crowds wanting to cross the roads. If they get too close, you can give them a slap, or better yet, you can use the traffic as your weapon. And best of all is that it’s not very scary, so even younger players can get a kick out of throwing stuff at the zombies.

Zombies aren’t the only danger, mind you. Pedestrians will often cross the dangerous roads if they’re out of patience, but before that, they might throw something at you, obscuring your view. Or maybe a car will backfire as it rounds the corner and blow up a bunch of smoke in your face that needs to be waved away.

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Or maybe Godzilla will show up and launch a few cars and then stamp a crater into the middle of the crossing. No, I’m not making that up – the Tokyo level really does have this hilarious tribute to Japan’s most famous monster, and that’s not the only disaster you’ll have to work around.

These “events” were unexpected but brilliant additions, and they really helped make what could have been an otherwise overly simple and mundane experience a lot more exciting.

Traffic Jams is a really easy and fun game to play, and it even has support for multiplayer with non-VR players using smartphones. We didn’t do this, on account of Charlie being five, so instead, we played the game passing the headset between us and it was really fun.

While Traffic Jams does get difficult quite quickly, it’s funny and daft rather than stupid and frustrating. The only real letdown is that there are only five stages to play on, but with each one offering multiple ways to play, various challenges, and that moreish one-more-go gameplay, it’s an easy game to recommend.

Review Disclaimer: This review was carried out using a copy of the game provided by the publisher. For more information, please read our Review Policy.

Primary version tested: PS4. Reviewed using PSVR on PS5.

For more PSVR reviews, be sure to check out our Reviews section, as well as our friends over on VR Game Critic.