Putty Squad

Putty Squad's bland and derivative presentation combines with frustratingly clunky mechanics to make it a difficult game to enjoy. Crammed with characters bereft of personality and generic audio effects that would have seemed passé even two decades ago, its nonsensical mash-up of googly-eyed putty balls, military hardware, and environments inspired by cultural clichés is difficult to endure. Worse, though, is navigating it all. Awkward and unintuitive inputs leave players fighting with their controllers as they attempt to perform the simplest of actions, including Putty's stretch moves and even his jumps. The controls get a bit more bearable with practice, but the hour or two it takes for them to become tolerable is something near torture.

Putty Squad is a window that provides a view to the medium of games as it existed nearly two decades ago, but instead of instilling any sense of nostalgic longing it simply makes the player appreciate how far interactive entertainment has come. Kids and their parents will quit the game keen to jump back to more modern fare.