Hey! I’m really excited to talk to you—yes, you read that right, you—about Penny’s Big Breakaway. It’s a game that had a lot of hype built up from its initial reveal: the next game from a lot of the folks that brought us Sonic Mania, and a 3D platformer no less. As a foreword, I’ll tell you that I absolutely loved the game to pieces, a personal highlight in an already stacked year for the medium, hence my excitement about being given the opportunity to review it. But before we get there, I’d like to give some context about me and the way in which I approached Penny’s first.
I’ve been playing games in some form or fashion for 30 years now. That number is big and scary to me—a giant, unknowable reminder of my own mortality looming large overhead, casting a shadow over my ancient heart. I remember turning 24 and feeling like I’d really, truly figured everything out. Which, with an extra decade’s worth of existence down the road and feeling like I know basically nothing about anything now, is quaint, silly, and dumb, and maybe even a little sweet. I miss 24-year-old me (mostly his hairline), but I also resent and even have disdain for him.
There’s a smug, self-assuredness to that version of myself that I can’t recapture, even if I wanted to, that drives me up a wall just to think about. I can’t remember if I was ever the type of insufferable person to pull a “well, actually” on you, or at least I hope I wasn’t. But I was absolutely the type to hear what kind of games, music, or movies you loved and give a little smirk if they didn’t meet my standards. Oh, you claim to like video games, yet have never played the timeless classic ‘Boku no Natsuyasumi’? Hmm, interesting.
Around this time period, a friend of mine let me borrow his copy of the book “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.” To be clear, it’s a great book, one of the best I’ve ever read, and one I’ve recommended many times over. But in a lot of ways, it was the absolute worst possible thing for me to read at that stage of my life, solely because I straight up misunderstood its message. In the broadest strokes, the book is a fictionalised autobiography of the life of Robert M. Pirsig, in which the search to define and quantify objective quality in the writing of his students drives the main character literally insane, before delving into his theory of metaphysics of quality, a new lens through which to view existence and how you engage with the objects and art around you (we’re going to get to the colourful, bouncy video game about bopping penguins on the head with a sentient yo-yo in a minute, I promise). I kind of glossed over that last part about eschewing the traditional objective/subjective view of reality, though, and instead just came away from the book going, “Wow, this dude was really dedicated to nailing down this objective quality thing. Crazy. I bet I can figure it out, though.”
This objective-quality view of art has been on my mind a lot lately, despite the fact that I’ve gotten pretty far away from it myself. What does it matter to me, or really anyone, if I enjoyed watching a goofy Dungeons and Dragons movie starring Chris Pine, which features an anthropomorphic bird man named Jarnathan, more than another three and a half-hour New England mafia-adjacent Martin Scorsese movie? The younger version of myself would scoff at the idea, and there’s probably at least one person reading this with raised eyebrows (maybe even for multiple reasons). But who, if I may be so bold, the hell are you?
I blathered on about the concept of objective quality so long as a preamble here because, in the modern gaming landscape, where anything with less than a 92 on Metacritic is considered a disappointment, a lot of folks have made up their minds that Penny’s Big Breakaway is a mediocre video game, “objectively.” And I’ll be the first to tell you that the game does have some undeniable issues, largely when it’s asking for the precision of the player in a game built primarily around large, sweeping motions. But I found it hard to care when, moment to moment, this was the most fun I’ve had with a 3D platformer since Super Mario Odyssey.
Where Penny’s accomplishes most of that fun for me, and where I think a lot of people might bounce off of it, are the controls. You move Penny by tilting the left analogue stick in your desired direction, and there’s (of course) an obligatory jump button that also allows for a slight yo-yo flip to grant you some extra aerial time and horizontal movement. That’s where a lot of the standard 3D platformer fare ends, though. You’ll be pressing the Y button or flicking the right analogue stick to control your yo-yo, the actual main verb (is yo-yoing a verb?) of Penny’s. Simply pressing or holding Y while your feet are on the ground gives Penny her standard attack to push back enemies, destroy objects, or grab power-ups and items. In the air, pressing, double-pressing, or holding that Y button gives you all kinds of new actions, like launching yourself forward using the yo-yo as a slingshot or the ability to hang in the air and wait for your opportune jumping moment. Rounding out the verb set are an around-the-world spin that’s handy for knocking large groups of enemies away from you or destroying multiple objects in the environment at once, as well as the ability to ride on your yo-yo like a little car, particularly handy for going downhill or navigating halfpipes.
Like I said previously, the game can at times feel like it’s buckling under its own weight in terms of what it’s trying to do. Your yo-yo interacts with both the world and you in ways I’ve never really seen out of a video game before, to the point where it almost feels more like you’re controlling it than Penny herself. This led to multiple instances of the game not registering that I was trying to pick up an object to be delivered within a certain time limit as a side quest objective, basically immediately forcing a restart out of me. Or a handful times where, in the search of elusive collectibles scattered throughout each stage, I used all of the abilities available to me in order to reach heights and places the game never intended me to be, only to end up getting stuck in a kind of nowhere zone, forcing a death despite me feeling exceedingly clever at the time. In one instance, I was moving with so much velocity due to a particular combination of yo-yo flinging and downhill momentum while my yo-yo was in its vehicle form that I ran into a wall and was just stuck inside of it, not able to get out, despite still seeing the silhouette of Penny moving around inside of it like a trapped phantom.
I can point to all of those things as objective flaws. I could also tell you that the story somehow makes way less sense than you’d expect given its pretty straightforward opening. Or just the general structure of the game feeling super uneven; why do some worlds have upwards of six levels and some only have two (and usually the worlds with the best music, too!)? The bosses, while usually at least visually creative, are basically extended wastes of time, a veritable speed bump on Penny and I’s way to experiencing the next masterclass platforming challenge around the corner. These are all facts I can point to as to why you may not find as much joy in Penny’s Big Breakaway as I did.
Personally? Who cares that I occasionally got trapped in a wall or felt more clever than the game design wanted me to be? Who cares that the penguins that chase you and act as the main antagonistic force of the game are more of an oddly designed, barely noticeable hindrance than an actual opposition force? Who cares that Penny herself is one of the weirdest character designs I’ve ever seen in a mascot platformer game ostensibly designed for children (she has a powdered wig for some reason)? Who cares that my yo-yo somehow managed to not pick up a time-sensitive object multiple times in a row despite the fact that the cursor indicated it was targeted and within range? When I think back to my time with Penny’s Big Breakaway, I’m not going to be thinking about any of that. Instead, I’ll be reminiscing about flinging myself across platforms made of books across an abstract library floating in some kind of astral plane. Or hurriedly racing past hordes of penguins chasing after me on a pastel-coloured beach while a Tee Lopes soundtrack gleefully blasts out of my Switch OLED speakers. Or driving my yo-yo across some sand dunes at night, my camera dynamically shifting around me. The moments when everything clicks in this game are pure platforming bliss rivalling the best in the genre, and as someone who 100%’d this game in just a few sittings despite an abundance of content, I’m happy to say that, personally, it hit way, way, way more often than any of its shortcomings might lead you to believe.
Is Penny’s Big Breakaway going to be for you? I think if you value speedy time attack emphasis over precision and Mario-style platforming, you can’t do much better, especially in three-dimensional space. There is a demo available now, at least on Switch, and if you’re the slightest bit interested, I hope you give it a shot. But ultimately, all I can do is tell you how I feel. And I feel that Penny’s is one of the most freeing and fun 3-D platformers I’ve had the joy of controlling.
Penny’s Big Breakaway
Release Date: Out Now
Platforms: Nintendo Switch, PC, PS5 & Xbox Series X/S
Price: £24.99
Many thanks to Pirate Division and keymailer for suppling us with a review copy of this game.
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