Raccoo Venture [Review]
Raccoo Venture is a 3D platformer that seemingly takes inspiration from Banjo & Kazooie and Super Lucky’s Tale. In this game, Raccoo has his chess set stolen and it’s up to you to go get it all back. The story is simple enough and the gameplay matches. It’s a calm, and classic collection game. Don’t worry too much though, not all the collectibles are required, but each level does tell you how many things are in the level if you’re so inclined to try and get everything.
The game’s platforming is tight, which makes it nice to maneuver and isn’t annoying. There are a few frustrating one-offs though. Jumping out of the water is one, it just feels too fast. Another is when a coin is hidden in the ground and you try to jump, Raccoo will often times stall, making the jump delayed. Though, these are easy to ignore as the rest of the platforming is smooth.
The game plays very uniquely. It almost feels like a VR platformer with how the camera is positioned and how you move the character. It’s also reminiscent of a lovely game called Lucky’s Tale that doesn’t really feel like many games. It shares some similarities in character designs and game difficulty. Both being based off of cute forest creatures and having an easier difficulty that is appealing to a younger audience. In my opinion, Raccoo Venture’s character designs feel a bit bland. Luckily with Raccoo himself, he has plenty of outfits (and even more you can collect throughout the game) that changes his design and actually makes him more unique and cute in my opinion. I thought that the different outfits actually meant that there was going to be a co-op, with one person wearing a different outfit. Sadly, the game isn’t actually co-op despite it looking like it could be setting up to be a multiplayer game.
The most difficult and frustrating part of the game was actually the aiming controls. It just moves awkwardly and is difficult to gauge where you’re actually throwing something. Fortunately this only matters because of an optional mini game you can do to get extra coins and collectables. I’m not sure if it was intentional, but the mini game feels like a call back to Castle Town from The Legend Of Zelda Ocarina of Time. At night, as an adult, in Ocarina of time you can go to the back ally and use Bomb Cue and do a target mini game. For whatever reason, this reminds me of that. Same with the mini game from Zelda Wind Waker. Now with Raccoo’s minigame, the awkwardness of the throwing is made very apparent when you have to hit a bunch of moving targets. Sometimes when standing right in front of a target and throwing the ball will then curve to the left, completely missing the target. It even seems like I hit the targets yet they don’t fall over. I personally was only able to make it 42 (while one goal is to get to 45) and that was after five tries. Like I said though, this is all optional and you can just avoid it instead of spending so much time with it.
Raccoo is a very calm and relaxing platformer that is easy enough to be a good starter for younger gamers to get into platformers. I only wish it was co-op so a parent was able to experience the game with their children and teach them how to become better.
This Game is great for young and new gamers who may be looking to try out a platformer and don’t have access to the Mario series. Raccoo Venture is an easy to pick up and play casual platformer.
Raccoo Venture is available now one PS5, Switch