Paw Patrol World

If you have children, nieces, nephews or regular contact with young children, PAW Patrol is probably familiar to you. The motley crew of doggy heroes from Adventure Bay have already starred in other instalments of their adventures in the past, and 2023 Outright Games and 3D Clouds return to the animated characters to give the youngest players in the house a new mission and a few hours of fun.

It's hard to miss the strengths and weaknesses of such a game in the early stages of the adventure. Paw Patrol World presents itself as a friendly open-world adventure title with eight characters, collectibles, side quests and a touch of platforming. The Paw Patrol is about to celebrate Paw Patrol Day with the townspeople and their mayor, when the blimp of the evil Mayor Humdinger and his Kitten Catastrophe Crew set out to ruin the party. From that moment on, Ryder, Marshall, Skye, Chase, Rubble, Rocky, Everest and Zuma will have to travel all over Adventure Bay, cleaning up the mess and helping everyone in need, either on foot or with their phenomenal vehicles.

Obviously, there is a lot of care in how information is presented to the player and how the controls respond. The narrator Ryder tells us in no uncertain terms what our next objective is with every step we take, which puppy or vehicle to use in each situation, and how to progress through the story. In the brief menu we can access the options, and as a personal warning I must insist on activating the manual camera, as otherwise the view of the characters is blocked and can be very annoying for certain jumps or movement with the vehicles. Otherwise, both on foot and behind the wheel, all the puppies and means of transport move in exactly the same way and at exactly the same speed.

And while every action is guided and we never lose sight of the next main mission or its intermediate steps, it's worth taking the occasional detour off course to pick up a few knick-knacks and visit some of the familiar locations from the animated series, because there will usually be some secret or collectible we can pick up. There are also small side quests to help the citizens, where we will have to use one or more puppies and their abilities to complete them. They are usually based on using the action button on foot or with a special vehicle. There is no chance of getting it wrong, because the game prevents you from trying anything other than the correct option. This is a bit excessive, because even though the game is for young children, I think experimentation or association of ideas could make the game more constructive and educational, rather than a list of tasks and rides to tick off.

Just as I think it could have been a little more advanced on the technical side. Admittedly, I played most of the game in handheld mode on Nintendo Switch, but when I put the machine in desktop mode the resolution only served to show some rather poor graphical detail. Paw Patrol World looks at times like a mobile or tablet game, and it seems that much of the budget has gone into licensing the IP and little into development as such.

Nevertheless, the game works. My youngest daughter has enjoyed seeing and hearing the voices of her favourite characters on screen (the game is fully localised to each region with the voices of the actors), and although she is too young to play, she understood that I could move freely around the stage or that one character was good for one situation and another was not. So, Paw Patrol World fulfils its ultimate goal: to entertain the little ones. And with its friendly and cheerful approach, it can provide a few hours of fun at home sharing "your first open-world game", before moving on to other series later on.