Review | PAW Patrol World

“A great introduction to 3D platforming & collecting for kids”

Another popular kids franchise game by Outright Games can only mean one thing: It’s time to team up with my kids again to review it and see what they think. A common problem I see in other reviews of similar titles is that they get tested by adults and we’re hardly the target audience, so I’m bringing in the experts!

Lio (5) and Fé (8) will be sharing some of their insights alongside my own through the course of this team-up review. They’ve already played all the other PAW Patrol games with me, so it’ll be really interesting to see how the first “open world” adventure measures up to the more closely defined level structure of the previous titles.

Zuma & Tracker to the rescue!

Things I liked!

• Open world| While it’s not really an open world, but 4 different locations that you are free to explore, it did provide us with plenty to do. Especially when you’re playing at the pace of young kids. This may just be the biggest game yet in the publisher’s repertoire and it really feels like there is something interesting around every corner, from cookies to pick up to items to interact with.
  Fé: “Most of the world had a playground and toys to play with. I really liked those.”
  Lio: “and you can even go down the slide in your car!”

• Vehicles| This brings me to the next part we liked: vehicles. At the press of a button, you can switch between walking around and driving in your car or hovercraft, depending on which pup you’ve chosen. The tanky controls did take some getting used to, but the kids loved going everywhere on wheels. You can also switch between which pup you’re playing as at any moment.
  Fé: “It’s weird that we can both play as the same puppy at the same time though.”
  Lio: “I like Zuma. he can even go on the water!”

• Instructions | You always have to play as a specific pup, in or out of your vehicle, to complete the missions, but it’s always very clear what’s expected of you. The gameplay itself is very simple as well and boils down to “go there and press X” but it’s enjoyable for young kids and people with a collecting addiction all the same. What I really liked is how there are paw prints to your next objective so you always know where to go.
  Fé: “Yeah, but sometimes you can’t see them because of where it’s looking.” (we’ll get to that later)
  Lio: “I didn’t like doing missions. I wanted to walk around and play.”

• Costumes, Stickers, postcards | There are a lot of unlocks that reward you for exploring the game or completing it, from costumes for your pups, to stickers for your vehicles and stamps to put on postcards, to 4 optional themed flashback episodes like ones for Halloween and Christmas.
  Fé: “I like how it wasn’t just hats but full costumes. Sky was so cute in her pirate outfit!”
  Lio: “and in the winter level, I could give Rubble a warm vest!”

Split-screen is great for parents & their kids or for siblings playing together!

Neither good nor bad

• Split Screen multiplayer | While it’s awesome that you can play in split-screen together, it’s limited to two players (so one of us had to watch while the others played) and it makes things like collecting all cookies a whole lot faster. Or one person can focus on the mission while the other goes for some collectables. The only downside is that accepting or completing a mission teleports the other player to your location and that was pretty frustrating to my kids. (both players need to agree to accept a new mission, however)
  Fé: “Yeah, I really didn’t like it when I saw something cool to play with and while I was going there, daddy finished a mission and suddenly I was somewhere else.”
  Lio: “I didn’t like the missions. I don’t like being told what to do.”

• Missions | You can only accept one mission at a time, unlike most open-world games. This means that if you accidentally accept a new one when you are 75% done with the previous mission, you’ll need to start over. It was also not 100% clear from the icon if you’ve already done an optional side-quest or not.

• Collecting | I really loved going for 100% of all collectables at the start of the game, but about halfway through, there was nothing left to unlock. My inner completionist hated ignoring some of the cookies near the end of the game, but at the same time, I couldn’t be bothered because there was no reward for it.
  Fé: “And when you replay a level, the collected cookies turn blue, and I wanted to collect them again but it didn’t do anything.”
  Lio: “I didn’t mind. It’s fun eating cookies!”

• Visuals | It’s not the prettiest game out there, even for a kids game, but it’s certainly not terrible either. there are some visual glitches here and there, but for the most part it was a good-looking world and the characters are brought to life in a credible way, even though some of the animations can be a bit stiff. Don’t expect any next-gen graphics that will push your system though, but I doubt anyone goes into this game with such expectations.
  Fé: “I really liked how it looked, especially the sunny island!”

“It’s time for a ruff-ruff rescue!”

Things I disliked!

• No control over the camera | It’s a fully 3D world for the first time and you’d expect there to be a 3D camera you can rotate, but that’s not the case. The camera auto-turns after walking in a certain direction for a while but it can be very frustrating, especially when you’re riding around. I would tell my kids to follow the path of footprints, but they couldn’t see it as it was going in the direction of the camera, with no way to move it around. I understand why they opted for this, as 3D cameras and kids are usually not a good combination, but I would have appreciated having a toggle in the settings either way.
  Fé: “It was really annoying not seeing where I was going.”
  Lio: “I couldn’t get the puppies to go where I wanted them to go!”

• Paid Cosmetics | I don’t mind having optional paid cosmetics, but the way to navigate to the Microsoft store and buy them was too in-your-face for a kids game. When scrolling through the outfits, you’ll see the ones locked behind a purchase and you can go straight to the store to buy them from here. That’s pretty dangerous with kids who don’t understand what they’re doing.
  Lio: “I almost bought the Halloween costumes and daddy yelled at me…”

How long did I play the review before publishing? 10 hours
How long to beat the story? 5 hours
How many Achievements did I earn before publishing? 21/21 (1000G)
How long to achieve 1000G | 8 hours
You’ll love this game if you like these | Peppa Pig World Adventures , Koa and the five pirate of Mara

If you prefer to see the game in action, we’ve got you covered!