Penguin Wars (PlayStation 4) review "Furry Road"

Somewhere on the road, conflict is brewing: rabbits, owls, bears, and many more animals are doing battle with a penguin. This penguin, named Riley, is traveling various lands in a truck with a front that's literally designed to look like a giant penguin head. Donning spiked-up hair, shades, and a long gold necklace, this "bad boy" takes anyone on who puts out a challenge as he drives closer and closer to the legendary Gira Gira Land. When a fight is about to commence, Riley's truck transforms into a vibrant arena, complete with a wide table, spectator seats, and a video wall in the background. Your protagonist then goes, one on one, against an opponent in quite an interesting sport concept.

Penguin Wars, a remake of 1985's Penguin Wars-Kun, takes the concept of air hockey and dodge ball, meshes ideas together, and creates a sport that actually sounds neat in writing. Each side starts with five balls at their disposal that they can throw, for a total of ten balls that can be tossed back and forth. In the original, there are two methods for winning a match: you either make sure more balls are on your opponent's side when time runs out, or you go for a "perfect game" by ensuring all ten balls land on their end during the match. Needless to say, this is trickier than it sounds since your opponent is constantly sending balls back your way, deflating the count before it reaches ten. That is, until you realize characters can be temporarily stunned if a ball knocks into them.

The remake carries over these core mechanics, but a few additional rules and changes have been put into place that make things a tad more flexible. The first one that should be mentioned is the inclusion of a health bar. In the original, if someone gets hit, all it does is incapacitate them for a few seconds; here, health is kicked off the meter every time a character is harmed, meaning there's now another victory method if said meter is fully depleted. However, this method modifies the "ten balls" win condition, as certain characters have more health than others; suffice it to say, performing this on later opponents, usually bosses, will only put a dent in their meter.

Your penguin avatar also has a slightly bigger move set this time. Your new default powers include a charged throw, which is something you also could do in the MSX-exclusive 1988 sequel, that causes more damage, along with a small dash which is extremely helpful when balls are frantically bouncing everywhere. Riley also has two special moves that can be unlocked, such as temporarily raising a barrier on your side that deflects balls back. Though, in order to avoid abuse, the devs make you build up a special meter first, which is done by tossing balls; the catch with this is that getting injured reduces the meter, so you have to be on point with your offense and defense.



As mentioned, you can unlock stuff; just how expansive is this version? In the main Story mode, you're tasked with fighting several opponents per "world," some that will inch you closer to a boss and others being optional, but all will earn you lollipops and currency. Lollipops are used to strengthen your character, such as ball toss speed and power, which explains why optional battles exists due to grinding. Currency is used to obtain special moves and designs, the latter for if you want balls looking like sushi and oranges. But why are special moves tied to currency if Riley only has two special moves? Every defeated boss becomes playable, allowing you to toss balls as a panda idol and, when he's not busy chomping on watermelons, a surfer capybara. Each also have their own unique specials, like actually catching a ball before it harms and another that temporarily disables ball tossing on the opponent's side.

In some instances, remakes often lose the charm and feel of what made the first one so fond in the first place. But in the case of this reinterpretation, Penguin Wars is an objectively better game as a remake. The original had a few arcade-related design "kinks" that ruined the overall enjoyment, such as your knockdown animation having no invincibility frames and the fact that the AI was designed to exploit it. This version still doesn't have iframes, but the game is much, much more forgiving with the AI not being abusive, plus you can crawl faster during the knockdown state to avoid balls.

While Penguin Wars may be a better version, how is it as a standalone game? The action, when all mechanics are at play, make for quite the engaging match... under the right circumstances. When the table is filled with balls frantically bouncing everywhere, with both sides utilizing their powers at the right moments, it often feels comparable to a bullet hell shooter. Though if you're playing just for the "Story" mode, the game can be weirdly unbalanced in your favor, mainly due to the hazard types placed in certain matches. Some require constantly tossing a lit bomb back and forth, others have arrow speed stripes that accelerate balls, and then there are throwaway matches where you hit an opponent for money.



They actually sound like fun ideas to have that add variety to the overall structure. However, in these instances, the AI... usually stops thinking properly. With the lit bomb, there's still time before it goes off if left alone, but the AI opponent will be so fixated on throwing it first, that it won't even realize when ten balls are on their side. This AI "malfunction" accounts for a good portion of hazard matches, and what's worse, you can't avoid them because the game doesn't inform you what hazards, if any, will be in said matches. For a game that's so clearly designed around having challenging matches, these seem to be going against that very point. Granted, this won't be the entire experience, and the very late-game matches rely more on skill than silly hazard luck; but the fact that they exist at all, in the dozens, puts a damper on the journey.

Though, it's very clear the game is geared more towards playing against actual players, and these hazard issues become moot when you're fighting someone with actual intellect. The devs are aware of this due to the inclusion of both local and online versus modes; the former is very much welcomed since you're likely not going to find an online match immediately, at a random time of the day, in a game with a niche idea. Still, even with all the improvements and additions made over the original title, Penguin Wars serves as a nice little time waster if you can get a competitive second player to go against you in a few matches. Unless another remake or sequel comes out, this is probably the best it's going to get for the series.

Community review by dementedhut (December 06, 2023) One of the many spin-offs and sequels of OutRun. There's... so many.