Vidjama Gmaes Work

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I recently got my hands on Poppy Playtime Chapter 1 through 3 on the Switch on a physical cart. I’ve played through all three chapters on the PC and reviewed the content so this is going to be more of a video of how well it runs on the Switch hardware and my thoughts playing the game on a controller. I’ll probably also talk about the content a little bit here and there but this is going to be less of an in-depth review of the games. I’m not going to talk about the story but there may be some very light spoilers when referencing the mechanics of certain parts of the games.

Poppy Playtime on Switch is a little different than if you played on PC. Rather than have a single launcher with DLC the cart literally just throws three separate apps on your home screen. At the time I played the cart has the latest version of the games already installed and didn’t need any updates when I put it in my system. I’m going to go on a limb here and say that the game probably isn’t going to get any more updates and that’s kind of a problem.

Poppy Playtime is a little confusing if you’re playing through the series back to back. It’s not terrible but it is inconsistent. Chapter 1 lets you use gyro (pronounce like the food) controls which is kinda handy, but would’ve been handier in chapter 2. Apparently sometime between porting chapter 1 and chapter 2 the devs decided they hated the Greeks because Chapter 2 has no gyro controls. But Chapter 3 does. I’m willing to bet that different people ported Chapter 2 versus 1 and 3 because chapters 1 and 3 share a few things that chapter 2 lacks.

Chapter 1 on the Switch runs fine. It’s very short and there aren’t a lot of mechanics involved, the whole thing will take under an hour to beat and well under an hour if you know what you’re doing already like I did. Performance was also fine, the game runs smooth and I didn’t notice any hiccups. Controls are decent and I didn’t have any trouble during the Huggy Wuggy chase scene at the end despite being on controller. One thing became apparent during Chapter 1 that I noticed a lot more in Chapter 2, but more on that in a second.

Chapter 2 has some problems on the Switch. I was originally going to report that the game was unfinishable but that’s not actually true. There’s a level after the three main mini-games where the gap you’re supposed to be able to pull yourself over is completely broken because no matter what the hands don’t pull you up and you can’t use the momentum to jump over. You can, as I figured out, hop along the side to get through it. Chapter 2 is much bigger than Chapter 1 and the team that ported it did a poor job. There’s more framerate hiccups, more texture pop in, but nothing that I would say qualifies the game as busted. It feels shoddily and likely cheaply handled.

One thing I did definitely notice is that the game has been…shall we say dumbed down for consoles. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing because Chapter 2 was kinda hard even with a mouse. I figured I’d be taking multiple attempts at the three mini-games on Switch because the PC version gave me a hard time, but actually never failed once. I noticed the mini-huggy game is far more accommodating on controller than it was on PC and the chase sequences with Mommy Longlegs were also much more relaxed. Everything is slower to make up for the player using a controller over a mouse and maybe it’s just because I’ve played these scenes multiple times on PC but I only had issues when there were technical problems.

And there were a few of them mostly centered around the hands not working as intended which is kinda important when your only game mechanics are based around those hands.

Poppy Playtime Chapter 3 is without a doubt the biggest of them all, and it shows in the game’s loading screens. Not terrible but also much longer than chapter 1 and 2, I’m talking 30-40 seconds on average. The game does look leaps and bounds better than its predecessors though and it does run smoothly on the Switch 2. Much smoother than chapter 2 oddly enough. They did bring back gyro aiming for Chapter 3 though, and outside of making the controls easier it definitely makes the game feel more chaotic running around. My only problem is the lack of controllable flashlight and the gas mask sequences are still kinda terrible to look at.

Should you buy Poppy Playtime on the Switch? Sure, if that’s where you want to play it. The physical version does have the Switch cart tax on it though. All three chapters on the eshop will run you roughly $30 while the physical copy will push you into the $40 range. Chapter 4 will run you another $20. I imagine another physical collection is coming at some point in the future likely containing chapters 4 through six whenever those release.

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