One game I’ve had my eye on for a while is Papo & Yo, Minority Media’s tale about a young boy and his adventure with a gigantic, poisonous frog-addicted monster. The premise behind the game is that it’s an analogy for Vander Caballero’s (the lead designer) experience growing up with an alchoholic father, something that appeals to me greatly.
Given the praise heaped on the game before release, I was a little surprised that the the reviews for Papo & Yo are coming in all over the map. While the game’s story is being praised, the mechanics are being lambasted as “simple” and there are a lot of reviews complaining about the poor technical state of the game, with glitches and crashes abound. Here’s a round up of some of those reviews:
- IGN 4/10
- Game Informer 8/10
- Polygon 5/10
- EGM 8.5/10
I think that sort of gives you a glimpse at just how varied people are in their thoughts about Papo & Yo. Even if the scores are all over the map, I’m still going to give this game a try. You might even go as far to say that the lower scores are prompting me more than the high ones.
What about you guys? Surprised about Papo & Yo’s reception? Did you think it would get a higher aggregate score because of the pre-release praise? Will you play it?
Woah, I hadn’t even heard of this game until this. I watched the IGN review and the music in the game alone makes me want to play it. I’m pretty used to glitches and bugs so that wouldn’t stop me from playing something that looks so honestly imaginative or creative. I’d love to hear what you guys think of this game once it’s played.
I have been watching this game for a long time. the reviews did surprise me a little, though I totally can see why IGN didn’t like it the cons that they pointed out don’t make me want to play the game any less. I don’t think that you should be so critical of a games graphics and length when that was clearly not a focus point for the developer. I think that when reviewing a game like this one should critique the aspects of the game that the developer views as important and then focus on the other aspects. something which the positive reviews seem to do more than the negative, which tend to focus on bullet point critiques.
It wasn’t Halo or COD, so IGN didn’t care.
Never heard of this, but it may be worth some time!!