A Stealth Mission That Bites Off More Than It Can Chew
Aardman is approaching ‘National Treasure’ status in our house. Their films and short films are on constant rotation, we drop Wallace lines into casual conversation, and we even pop to Bristol once a year to follow the annual Gromit Trail. We’re Aardman nerds, if there’s such a thing.
We can probably consider ourselves the target market for Chicken Run: Eggstraction. This is fantastically authentic to Aardman (with stop-motion-like cutscenes), authentic to Chicken Run (with some original voices, plus a stealth theme that fits the movies to a T) and it’s couch co-op to boot (or couch coop, if you’d prefer the Chicken Pun). It is, by our measure at least, about as distant as you can get from a cash-grab, and very much made by people who understand and love the studio and series.
Which is why, as a family, we were left utterly bemused by our reaction to Chicken Run: Eggstraction. We can see the passion in every element of the game, but the experience left us utterly cold. As a family co-op experience, it was turned off after an hour. Dad had to play the rest on his own. What happened?
Deus Eggs
Events take place a few months after Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget. While Mrs Tweedy has been apprehended and her mind-controlled processing plant has been shut down, her technology is still at large. There are a number of hen-trepreneurs who are using it, and it’s Molly, Rocky, Frizzle and the rest of the gang’s task to undermine them. That means hopping from farm to processing plant, rescuing the collared chickens and defeating any baddies along the way. It represents a bit of ‘taking the battle to the enemy’.
As noted, Chicken Run: Eggstraction is a stealth game. That’s a bold shout for a licensed game, certainly one made for families. We can’t recall one, certainly as all-in on stealth as Chicken Run: Eggstraction is. Maybe there’s a reason for that.
You’re given a kind of isometric view of a factory, three chickens to control (independently in co-op, or as a kind of chicken collective with shared abilities in single-player) and a series of guards, CCTVs, traps and conveyor belts to navigate.
There’s a kind of rhythm to the level. You start by finding a path to the incarcerated chickens, opening doors via switches and often shutting down enemies where you can. Then you’re leading the chickens back through the level to an extraction point. Your task isn’t just to find the chickens, you have to keep enough alive on the return to succeed.
Now consider all of the above with a young family. And in co-op. This is where I couldn’t help but feel that Chicken Run: Eggstraction bites off more chicken than it can chew. Because our experience was like Overcooked! but without the laughs. We were frustrated, confused and angry.
Dis-hen-ored
There are a few causes, all worth rattling off. Chicken Run: Eggstraction is a difficult to read game. Some paths are hidden behind pipes, foreground or look like decoration. Knowing the way around is a challenge for younger players. Then there are some bizarre design decisions, like passable doors with lasers criss-crossing over it. These are actually ‘key’ doors, and you need a corresponding keycard to pass through, but the lasers can’t help but say ‘I am impassable, and will probably kill you too’. And to add to the confusion, new abilities to learn and enemies to beat are tossed in on every single level. There’s no time to master anything.
Failure is a compounding problem. Take the game’s mechanical moles. They hop out of the ground with barely a visual cue and stun one of the team. Players can try to revive their partners, but they will get stunned too, as there’s no cooldown on the mole. Suddenly, you have a wiped team who wondered what they did wrong (taking out the mole, as it happens, is probably the best recourse). There are no checkpoints so death is brutal (particularly when your escaping chickens merrily wander into a meatgrinder).
Controls, too, expect a lot from a player. Special powers are essential to stun and hide from enemies, but too many of them are a combo of button-presses that only the adults could master. We love the general concept of aiming a chicken-cannon at a robo-dog, but why did it have to be an RT press to activate a power mode, an aim with a left-stick, and a button-press to activate it? Why couldn’t it have been a simple tap of a face button?
And then there’s the co-op, which – we should note – only becomes available after the first two levels. Chicken Run: Eggstraction is an intricate game, needing timed button presses, coordinated actions and a plan. That’s fine in solo, but in multiplayer we found it to be a source of arguments. Everyone needs to be on it at all times, working together. Otherwise, death-by-mole, -ducks, -dogs and -blades is far too possible. We’re not convinced that stealth works in co-op full-stop, but in a family game? That’s ambitious to the point of folly.
Some of the above can be softened. There’s a Story Mode, which at least takes care of a lot of the failure and frenzy problems. But it can’t do anything about the co-op, controls and poor legibility in levels. Single-player addresses a few of them too. We would go so far to say that Chicken Run: Eggstraction is really only a single-player game. It’s not unplayable in multiplayer, but – at least in our house – it wasn’t fun.
Splinter Shell
We feel mean giving such a proportion of the review to the negatives, but it feels like – as a prospective Christmas present – they need to be in the foreground. So, let’s spend a paragraph or two on the positives.
Like a stick of rock, authenticity runs through all of Chicken Run: Eggstraction. Outright Games and Aardman Animations have done a stupendous job of making this feel like a continuation of the movies. The new SEAL baddie is great fun, the gang are all present and voiced by the original actors (we think – we certainly recognised Bella Ramsey), and there are plenty of laughs. The cutscenes look stop-motion, as they should.
And get the controller in the hands of a solo player who has a dollop of patience and ability, and they will have something approaching a good time. Each level adds something new, which means that there’s always a sense of running-to-catch up. For a co-op family team that’s a death-knell, but for a solo player it’s a positive. And the levels get fiendish. Some are elaborate puzzles that need to be unknotted before you even take a step.
A Single-Player Stealth Mission Disguised as Co-op
If there were games that needed sticker warnings on the packaging, this is it. Chicken Run: Eggstraction may say that it’s family-friendly and co-op, but we’d argue that those are precisely the worst ways to play. If you want a modicum of fun, you need to treat it as a demanding and resolutely single-player stealth game. Which might lead to the burning question: how many Chicken Run fans want that type of experience?
Important Links
The Great Egg-scape Continues in Chicken Run: Eggstraction – Release Date Confirmed – https://www.thexboxhub.com/the-great-egg-scape-continues-in-chicken-run-eggstraction-this-autumn/
Buy Chicken Run: Eggstraction from the Xbox Store – https://www.xbox.com/en-gb/games/store/chicken-run-eggstraction/9pfhlwsgdqns
