Push Me Pull You Review

Seeing this game in action is one thing but playing it is a completely different ball game – literally.  Push Me Pull You is a dumb but brilliant sports game for 2-4 players that tests your friendship and makes for a great party game. While the premise is the same for the game types, little changes make the game worthwhile. You play as one half of weird… worm… human… hybrid… thing. Basically your aim is to keep the ball on your side of the court with the help of your partner, who controls the other half of you while you play against another team.

It sounds weird, and that’s because it is, especially depending on the way you play. The game gives you the option to play with a controller each or you can challenge yourself even further and play against each other using one controller. How? Half and half, of course. One player uses the right side, the other the left – which makes the game all the more intriguing. Sharing a controller is one thing, but sharing a controller with your opponent tests your trust and the game becomes even more challenging.

A great addition to the game is the warm-up level which you’re let loose in to explore and get the hang of the controls – whether that’s with one or two controllers. You can venture around a playground area and you can play how you want before you get down to the nitty gritty of the actual competitive gameplay. This makes for a great feature if you’re still getting used to the game’s mechanics and is a fun part of the game in itself.

The graphics are simplistic, and work wonders for what the game is. This is the perfect style for a game like this – if the developers had tried to be realistic with these graphics it would have made it a very different game. No one wants to see a realistic looking human/worm hybrid. The colours used are pastels so there’s nothing too bright and obnoxious on the screen at any time, which makes the game easy on the eyes and better to play. I can’t tell you how many games I’ve played where the developers have overcompensated with a bad choice of colours that make the game nauseating to look that for an extended amount of time. House House made a good choice designing this game and I’m impressed.

The sounds throughout the game were hit or miss. The music was used sparingly through the menu and the levels although where it was used it was great. A fun and upbeat ukulele tune makes you want to jam out while playing, or at least while going through the menu because the music is surprisingly lacking during the actual gameplay. The sound effects on the other hand were there in full force and I could not get on board with them. They were appropriate and great for what the game is, but every time I heard the sound of the worm’s body shrinking or growing or slapping into something it made me cringe. The humour of it all worked fantastically though.

Unfortunately the game is pretty much the same no matter what game mode you play on, so it can become somewhat mundane after a while. Sure, it’s a fun party game and offers something that you’ve definitely not seen before – but is it something that makes you want to keep going back for more? Not really. Its novelty would wear off quickly if you were to play this a lot and its charm is only there for the beginning.

Push Me Pull You is an incredibly fun party game. The hilarious and fun premise makes it great for a night in. It’s unique and offers something new which you definitely wouldn’t have seen before and while the gameplay would probably become boring quickly, it’s worth playing at least once just to say that you have.

REVIEW CODE: A complimentary Sony Playstation 4 code was provided to Bonus Stage for this review. Please send all review code enquiries to press@4gn.co.uk.