Snow Bros. Wonderland on PS5

I took a bit of a break to check out the monthly games that are on offer from PS-Plus network as I tend to do whenever I have been playing a particular game for a long period of time and landed on Snow Bros Wonderland.

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I kind of thought that based only on the trailer that they provide inside the PS5 interface that the game looked kind of stupid, but it had a chance to bring about a little bit of that N64 appeal and nostalgia that I enjoyed so much as a kid.

Well, it managed to scratch that distant itch for I would say about 15 minutes then the game became repetitive and extremely basic.

I don't really know what the story is here but it is one of your usual ones about a kingdom of some sort being taken over by something stupid and you and your snowman friend have to go and take it back over. Yeah, it's as dumb as it sounds.

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you have some sort of freezing projectile that after you hit an enemy with enough of them they turn into a snowball and then you roll that snowball at other enemies that will crush and destroy them. After you crush a certain amount of them the path forward will open or one of them will drop a key that allows you to continue on your way to the next area.... where you will do almost exactly the same thing over and over again until you finish a stage and have the option of moving forward or doing that one that you just did, again, but maybe better.

I never replayed a single stage.

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The advantages of this game are that the controls are extremely easy to remember and it will constantly remind you if you forget for even a little bit. It is also cute and has some decent voice acting.

The disadvantages of this game is everything else.

It came as no surprise that this was a Japan release only at first and was ported to other regions later when I guess they could afford a translator and voice actors to do the completely unnecessary spoken parts of the game. The original is スノーブラザーズ ワンダーランド Sunō Burazāzu Wandārando. Which is a typical Japanese game that is attempting to emulate English and I love that they do that.

The soundtrack was endearing at first as were the sushi sort of cash that you would pick up to I guess buy more skins or something but after a very short amount of time I tired of this and muted the music.

The sound is pretty good in a sort of Super Monkey Ball arcade sort of way but again, this sort of simplicity is something that doesn't really appeal to me anymore. The MarioWorld way in which you navigate the "world" in order to present this as not being linear is interesting but kind of tired if you ask me. I can't imagine the sort of person that would actually replay the old levels just to get some sort of higher score. I suppose there is someone out there that did this but that person is not me.

I did this to myself. I should have just kept playing GTA5 because I already know that I like that. I was kind of hopeful that this would be an easy distraction for times that I get grinded down by the difficulty of GTA5 but going to the complete opposite end of the spectrum to something that is easy to the point of stupid is not the correct remedy.

There is a reason that this game is given away for free on PS-Plus and that is because this game is long past its expiration date and is extremely similar to so many other titles to the point where it doesn't really have anything new to offer at all.

I cannot in good faith recommend this game to anyone because you probably already have half a dozen games that are facsimiles of it in your library.

Back to GTA5 it is!