Developer: Huu Games, Animera Games
Publisher: Assemble Entertainment, WhisperGames
Platform: PC, Switch, Xbox One, PS4
Tested on: Switch
Shakes on a Plane – Review
After the massive success of Overcooked, a lot of companies tried to jump on the bandwagon of these hectic party games, and some have done so successfully. We look back fondly to Catastronauts and Moving Out, with Cannibal Cuisine and Tools Up! also having a bit of charm. This time we get to play Huu Games’ relatively unknown Shakes on a Plane, which clearly wants to mimic the gameplay of Overcooked, albeit budget-style.
Story
For some reason, while the initial trailer showed us a game about serving food on airplanes, we suddenly find ourselves in the midst of an intergalactic cooking contest. While the aliens usually bring home the gold, it seems that humanity’s best way to fight back is to serve airplane food. Logical? Not really. Is the plot any good? Not really, either.
While the game does come with a story, it feels a bit useless and too far-fetched. Overcooked had a nice story that was food-related and also in sync with its theme. The same can be said for the above-mentioned games as well, safe for Tools Up!, which didn’t really have a story. It would have been better just to revolve around airplane food or to have no story at all in this game.
Graphics
Shakes on a Plane does not look impressive at all. The game uses somewhat similar decors for many of its stages, as well as for the passengers on the planes. You’ll get to see the same character models over and over again, even in the same stage, albeit with somewhat different color tones. We feel that if there was a bit more diversity in terms of character models, the game would have looked a lot better. The player characters look slightly more animated and attractive, but there are so few options to choose from that they become quite bland.
The game does not really stutter or suffer from frame drops, it’s just somewhat of a bland mess. The game does not really entice you to go on, and the overall design just feels a bit plain and boring for a game such as this. It would have been nice to have a bit more color diversity, some more original designs, a bit more decoration. Just the little things seem to be lacking. We expected more.
Sound
The sound design is generic. You’ll have all the bits and bobs present for a functional game, it just won’t draw you in with a catchy soundtrack. The music is somewhat basic and not really pleasant to listen to. It’s just something to counteract the otherwise mute game.
Gameplay
Shakes on a Plane is a party game much in the same vein as the Overcooked game. In this game, you’ll be serving passengers on your plane (or other unidentified flying objects) food and drinks basically. The game will first start off with you bringing item per item, later using trays to drop off bigger orders or even serve multiple passengers. Sometimes you have to actually prepare the food, rather than ‘summon’ it from a machine. While the concept is okay(ish) and the game is functional, we couldn’t help but feel there was a lot wrong with the game.
The controls aren’t as tight and responsive as Overcooked’s and it sometimes felt a bit drifty and unresponsive. Nonetheless, this could have been because of the overall slow movement in the game, the tiny corridors with poor hit detection or just the copy-paste control scheme from the aforementioned series. Nonetheless, everything works and for the most part, things are quite clear.
We sometimes thought we nailed a game perfectly, yet still got fails, which were never properly explained. We delivered all food items, got rid of all the trash the passengers produced and we even made sure not to tackle the passengers running around. It was a mystery for us why we then ended up with around 7 fails in the level, losing our shot at that three-star rating.
The game does gradually increase the things you have to do, but at the same time also massively increases the difficulty of the actual game. We found ourselves failing levels, while nailing the previous one with all three stars. This was a bit ludicrous at times. Also, the game itself is barely playable when playing solo, as there seems to be no difficulty scaling. You can also swap between two characters when playing solo, it often feels useless, however, as the preparation process is not altered as it is in Overcooked.
We have to say that the game feels somewhat like a beta version of the actual product. It’s quite tedious always having to add players for every level, with it not remembering the actual active players. It’s also annoying to not have the game remember the character a player picked the previous level. The level select screen may look nice, it’s actually quite annoying to work with.
Conclusion
Shakes on a Plane tries to mimic a lot of gameplay elements from the ‘greats’ of the party genre, but it also feels like the sales-bin version of said games. We did get some fun out of Shakes on a Plane, but it generally doesn’t feel like a full game or just finished for that matter. If this would have been a $5/€5 game, we would have given it a bit more slack, but asking four times the mentioned amount is a bit much. At this point in time, we’d not recommend booking a flight for this game.
Shakes on a Plane - Review,
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[…] Assemble Entertainment and developer Huu Games have announced that their co-op title Shakes on a Plane is available today for PlayStation 4/5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X|S. The console versions will be […]