Party Animals
Years ago, an unexpected subgenre of party game was born: squishy little fellas doing silly stuff. I don’t really know what to call this genre which houses things like Gang Beasts, Human Fall Flat, and many more, but Party Animals is the latest of them–and arguably the greatest. Launching on Game Pass, Party Animals is immediately the prettiest of all the games like it, with each of its goofy anthropomorphized animal characters having a level of fidelity that counterparts have never approached. But visual fidelity is merely a nice bonus to what is most importantly a lovely party game.
If you’ve played games like it, you’ll see some familiar game modes: arcade sports, Royal Rumble-like elimination modes atop moving airplanes, PvP competitions where players score points for their team while sabotaging others. The controls are necessarily unwieldy in this genre, as flopping around as these mascots is meant to be somewhat unpredictable, but the nice thing is they’re just a bit more reliable here, creating a minor skill gap without sacrificing the care-free nature of this kind of game.
No matter how hard-fought a round gets or how wheezy your cough may become as the cartoon chaos unfolds every round, it always ends with a LittleBigPlanet-like pose for the camera, which allows the groups of four, five, or even more players to climb over, crash into, and headbutt each other once more to earn the center of the frame. These stills at the end of each game perfectly capture the vibe of Party Animals, where losing can be more enjoyable than some games make winning feel. — Mark Delaney