Foamstars Review

"Foamy Mess"

Multiplayer

February 22, 2024 at 6:42pm
By Jason Stettner

While I’m all for trying out new things in gaming multiplayer, well I guess this is more derivative of Splatoon. Anyways, I’m always down to try out new multiplayer games though when it comes to Foamstars we get a rather noisy super quick twitchy game that doesn’t really have a whole lot to offer. The core of the game is based around 4v4 combat.

These matches can be like a minute long, often taking longer to matchmake than to play. They’re just basically noise as your foam covers the map and the characters awkwardly smack into each other to eliminate one another. That’s the core mode, zero depth or detail and before you can even get a feel for your opponents it just ends.

The other option for PVP is a rotating offering with the Rubber Duck mode being my favorite. You do a bit of a king of the hill tug of war over this massive DJ duck. There’s a tad more depth there, but as I said it’s rotating so you can’t play it all the time. Even then, it always felt lopsided or well maybe folks just weren’t into the objective I suppose.

Outside of PVP there’s a PVE mode which can also be a single player type thing I guess where you do lame quick defense type missions. It was awful, and no one was ever playing this mode. The characters have differing selections here for some resemblance of a story, but honestly not at all and it’s not worth a second of your time regardless. Finally, a ranked mode.

Gameplay

The vibrant neon soaked background Vegas like city really is charming, but alas it’s just a backdrop. I guess it’s called Bath Vegas, seriously. The main floor of conflict is a light show with reflections and it quickly gets covered in mounds of foam.

The foam is dynamic, something with weight and the physics involved there are rather fascinating. It is however somewhat hard to maneuver through to get where you need to as you’re constantly halting to get your foam to be able to board along it. It’s also just noise and I believe most players are just spraying and smacking randomly without any strategy.

Well, it’s hard to develop strategy when your screen is just sporadic noise and matches end in a minute or two. There’s just no depth and I left feeling like the combat was just cumbersome and awkward. I think there’s a neat idea here, just the execution is so bizarre and busy visually. We are seeing a 4k resolution at 60fps here on Playstation 5 so it does look nice and flashy.

It’s just not very fun or reactive to play. You do also get a hangout area where you can fill the space with foam to practice while waiting minutes to get a match. There are also super, and I mean super expensive microtransactions you can buy in the form of outfits. Some costing the price of a full game, insanity. I don’t always dive into that aspect in my reviews, but woah. It’s bad.

The Conclusion

Foamstars is a whole lot of noise, the foam is cool but ultimately the game just left me dry. It should be a moist, exciting experience that you want to throw yourself into but is just boring. Or maybe empty? Hard to say when the matches were so swift that I wasn’t even able to adjust to what was going on within it.

The core mode for these multiplayer games needed to be compelling and just smacking each other on boards after awkwardly slogging through foam isn’t fun. The Rubber Duck mode should perhaps be the focus here, but alas it isn’t.

I really can’t see this live service game making it long term. Great for those that want to go for a splash, but I wasn’t vibing with this one at all and moved on from it very quickly. I wish it were more interesting, or even exciting and it just felt way too busy for me to enjoy.

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Foamstars Review on Playstation 5

Rating Overall: 3.5