If there’s a genre/sub-genre from years past that people remember fondly despite being somewhat focused at younger ages, it’s the collect-a-thon. There have been many recent attempts at revitalizing it, some more successful than others, but each typically has its own merits. That is certainly true of this one; just make sure you go into it with the right mindset.

Too often games are built up with unrealistic expectations compared to what they actually are – in some cases this is the fault of the devs, but most times its people watching a cinematic trailer and reading into things themselves. Make no mistake, New Super Lucky’s Tale is a game geared toward younger folks with jokes that may or may not make adults laugh. This is my first experience with Lucky, as I didn’t play his VR outing (Lucky’s Tale), nor did I play the follow up that ditched the VR experience (Super Lucky’s Tale). Luckily, that’s not necessary to enjoy the latest entry, especially given that it’s an enhanced version of the sequel. To be honest, I’m interested to see where the next one goes naming convention wise – it seems to be taking the Street Fighter approach thus far.

I actually looked at this game with my daughter in mind. She’s 2.5 years old now, and while I rarely get to play games around her, I thought I’d give this a shot. We made it through the first level before she decided she wanted to watch something instead of pretend to play with me reading her all the dialogue and explaining everything that was going on. But to be honest, that’s better than most times I’ve tried in the past (although Fall Guys has changed this, she loves that game and always wants to play, and will also cheer me on as I play it if she’s eating). Playing alongside her, the game just made sense – it was too easy for me, but it would definitely provide her a challenge while still being appealing.

Each world has its own puzzles outside of the normal levels, and each level has four collectibles to find. One is collecting the letters to spell Lucky, another is collecting 300 coins, one is for finding a hidden page (the most prominent collectible as everything essentially results in a page as they’re necessary for progressing in the game), and the last is for completing the level. It wasn’t until I reached a labyrinth level in the second world that I didn’t complete the level with all four my first time through. And I didn’t die until I had about 40 lives saved up – these essentially just let you start a check point instead of starting the level over (I imagine, didn’t feel like dying enough times to test it out).

The levels themselves are about what you’d expect in this genre of game with portals (a la Spyro and Mario 64). However, they add some variance from time to time with 2D levels, and even automatic runners. It was a nice reprieve from the normal 3D platforming and fetch quests, as were the puzzles found amongst the hub worlds that involved things like moving statues and marble labyrinths that I used to play with when I was little.

There’s a story in the game, and as much as I tried to be invested, I just found myself skipping through the dialogue at a certain point. There’s actually one NPC you’ll find that made me feel anxious with how much dialogue I had to skip, but I know it was for humor’s sake and nothing important was being said. I ran into a few glitches throughout, and while the difficulty ramps up as you progress, it’s ultimately not going to cause you much of a challenge. And that’s okay, not every game has to cause you to go gray or lose hair early on – it just makes it difficult to play long bouts of because you breeze through it.

If you have any little ones in your life, New Super Lucky’s Tale is colorful enough that it’ll grab them, has enemies that will keep you from worrying about violence, and is fun enough that adults can play through with them. It’s not going to win Game of the Year, but it may just win over your heart.

8 out of 10

Pros

• Family Friendly Fun
• Vibrant Settings
• Very Accessible

Cons

• Dialogue is Hit or Miss
• Some Glitches

New Super Lucky’s Tale was developed by Playful Corp. and published by PQube Games. It launched on NS, PC, PS4, and X1. The game was provided to us for review on PS4. If you’d like to see more of New Super Lucky’s Tale, check out the publisher’s site.

 

Here at GBG we use a rating method that you are more than likely familiar with – a scale of 1 to 10. For clarification, we intend on using the entire scale: 1-4 is something you should probably avoid paying for; 5-7 is something that is worth playing, but probably not at full price; 8-10 is a great title that you can feel confident about buying. If you have any questions or comments about how we rate a game, please let us know.

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