Papa Smurf is hosting a party! And in new game, The Smurfs Village Party, with the help of the dozens of Smurfs in the village, it is our mission to assist in the preparations, spread across the land of the Smurf Village, forest and the forbidden area of Gargamel’s lair.
This new offering in the Smurfs universe is set as a Party Game with two gameplay modes. Adventure Mode, following an all-new original story with a range of missions and mini games to play as we prepare the village for Papa Smurf’s massive party. The second being Party Game mode with 2-4 local multiplayer, 50 mini-games and over 15 playable characters. The concept is great and in theory, on par with some of the great multiplayer party games. But the execution is way off and sadly, this game was excruciating to play. This new game sadly misses the mark. Big time.
I spent most my time playing the adventure mode and right off the bat, I was struggling. The visuals are jumpy, poorly rendered and the camera tracking is disastrous. The open-world aspect of the game is, again, great in theory, but so very poorly done. I was able to just cut corners over mountains that I should not have been able to traverse, glitch my way thru walls and across boundaries. And the distance between some of the micro-missions was exhausting.
In a time when graphics and visuals are paramount to a game, this one seemed like it was trying to do way too much and it was either not optimised before deployment, or just lazy. Playing it on my PlayStation 5 made it feel like I was trying to run a current AAA game on an old PS2. It was so bad that at times it would be hurting my eyes.
The mini games themselves were okay and I did have fun a few times, but they are also poorly executed. The writing is terrible and the constant random dialogue from the playable character is tiresome. Forget about trying to use the map! The sheer size of the points of interest makes it unusable.
It is sad, because The Smurfs Village Party had so much potential to be great. Developers: Balio Studio, VetaSoft should really go back on this one and start again. Maybe try not to pack too much into the game and cut it back to the basics. A party game does not need a large open world landscape to traverse, a smaller space would’ve been so much more fun. Execute the core objective and then all of the sudden, less is more. Just look at how well Mario Party has done over the decades.
If it isn’t clear by now, The Smurfs Village Party is one of the worst games I have been subjected to in a very long time. And after two very great games from Microids in the Smurfs series, this is one to forget.
Normally, this is where I tell you to go get it and give it a go. Don’t.
The Smurfs Village Party is available now on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, X-Box One, X-Box Series X|S, Nintendo Switch and PC.