Foamstars shoots for Splatoon, but its style gets in the way
polygon.comSquare Enix’s new third-person shooter Foamstars, which pits teams of four players against each other in bubble-slathered battles, appears to be the company’s take on Nintendo’s popular ink-shooter series, Splatoon.
As part of Summer Game Fest, Polygon got hands-on time with the game, and there’s good news: The format of matches introduces an enjoyable twist that leads to an exciting competition. There’s also bad news: Fighting with bubbles doesn’t pack the same punch as gloppy ink — and the gameplay suffers because of it.
The general premise of Foamstars is easy to understand and jump into. To win a match, your team must kill any members of the opposing team seven times. Once your team gets seven kills, the best player on the other team becomes the “star player,” and you need to kill them to win the game.
Similar to the Splatoon games, you can spray the arena — venues include glittery, Las Vegas-style clubs — with foam of your team’s color and surf smoothly across it. Certain skill attacks and bubbles can be shot in the same spot to build up a pile of bubbles that will then give you a higher vantage point to shoot (or be shot). Each character, a mix of cartoony idols and influencers, has two different skill attacks; for example, the pink-pigtailed Soa can throw a grenade and do a twirling jump through the air that emits bubbles. Different characters have varying skills, so a character like Pen Gwyn is more suited for long-distance sniping whereas Rave Breaker can cover the map with loads of foam.
The match format is a welcome twist that will likely be most enjoyable for solo players who seek a thrill from hard-carrying a match. The star player gets the brunt of the pressure in the late-game and can turn the tide of
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