Snake Pass makes me happy inside and that's all you need to know about the game.
It's a fantastic experience, like one you've never had before well, I never had before. Extremely simple in its premise and execution, Snake Pass brims with childhood dreams and wonder. In this physics based action-puzzle game, you will slither, curl and climb your way through increasingly challenging worlds as Noodle, a cute coral snake that looks like he was pulled from one of Pixar's animated movies.
The gameplay is very reminiscent of old Rare games, Banjo Kazooie and other similar games, but at the same moment is entirely new as we've never seen or played as a snake before. Controlling Noodle can be quite hard to wrap your head around (see what I did there). It's not like the other conventional action-puzzle games where you just held your analog stick forward and the character moved. Here you must wiggle your analog while holding R2 in order to move.
You can also raise your head by holding X and "stick" to surfaces with L2. That's the extent of the abilities you have to use to traverse across 15 levels finding the three required gems to continue to the next level, but also the many numerous hidden coins and the weird floating bubbles. Noodle can also operate switches, pulleys and levers, but you know as a snake can. And slithering around these levels, climbing and clinging to the bamboo trunks to be able to reach that hidden coin is the most fun I had with Snake Pass. Yeah, there's a story, but who cares?
I loved every moment of Snake Pass even though I fell countless times to my death mainly because I had to manually move my camera while holding three other buttons plus the analog stick. But even then, when I was falling, I never stopped smiling. Noodle has some fantastic facial animations and some great vocal "aaahhhs", "oohhhs" and everything in between, that I really really appreciated. Think of the instances in Wall-E where with just small eye movements and "noises", you fell in love with him even more that you already did. It felt the same with Noodle in Snake Pass.
I don't know though, maybe I'm at a weird age where I see and feel stuff that aren't necessary there, but even now as I am writing this and recalling playing Snake Pass I feel all warm and fuzzy inside. The same goes for the presentation, it is all vibrant, beautiful and extremely pleasing to the eye and the score is also fantastic, again going back to that childhood wonder.
Should you get this game? Absolutely yes! It's simple and quite short, but you will feel definitely better during and after playing the game. Snake Pass is just a fantastic game and that's about it. Thanks for reading!
