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My Friend Peppa Pig (PS5) Review | via PS4 BC

After introducing my now 4-year-old daughter to playing video games through Paw Patrol The Movie: Adventure City Calls only a few weeks ago, the perfect game release has landed with My Friend Peppa Pig, developed by Petoons Studio and published by Outright Games. My daughter is a huge Peppa Pig fan and we have watched countless hours of the cartoon, have a handful of Peppa books and have the plushies of Peppa and George which she often plays with.

My Friend Peppa Pig is easily the most authentic video game based on a television show or movie that I have ever played. It looks and feels as if you are within the cartoon itself and my daughter absolutely loved the fact that she was playing along with Peppa and seeing her friends and family. It even has the original voice of Peppa, however, not all the characters are voiced the same as their cartoon counterparts, but it wasn’t overly noticeable.
My Friend Peppa Pig 1+1
To call My Friend Peppa Pig a video game is quite a stretch. It is more like an interactive episode of the cartoon. To start, you get to create your own character to join Peppa on your adventure. There are quite a few options on offer. Firstly, you can choose to be a boy or girl and which animal friend you want to be, so you can be like Suzy Sheep or Pedro Pony – my daughter chose to be a rabbit, like Rebecca Rabbit. You then get given the choice of the colour of your character and their outfit and whether they wish to accessorise by wearing a hat or glasses. My daughter was proud of her creation and it was a smart move having a build your own character option within the game as it helps make the story more personal to the player.

After creating your character, you begin the story by learning how to move in the 2D world by moving the analogue stick left and right and interacting with objects by pressing the action button, which was the Cross button on the PS5. As these are the only controller actions needed throughout My Friend Peppa Pig, my daughter had no difficulty in playing the game from start to finish completely on her own. I would therefore easily recommend My Friend Peppa Pig for any children that have an interest in Peppa Pig and are just starting their journey in playing video games on consoles.

Soon after learning the controls of the game you get to meet Peppa Pig and visit her house. My daughter giggled in excitement at getting to meet Peppa’s family. I couldn’t believe how visually identical My Friend Peppa Pig looked to the cartoon. I know the show doesn’t push the boundaries in animation, but with the bright colour palette and the characters moving like their on-screen counterparts, it looked as if I was watching an episode of the show. Within Peppa’s home and coming across Daddy Pig, the character my daughter had created could interact with the kitchen chair and help Daddy Pig with the cooking by repeatedly pressing the action button, when prompted, to stir the salad. A nice little interactive moment.
My Friend Peppa Pig 2+1
Upon meeting George and Mummy Pig for the first time, Peppa’s dad comes rushing into the living room saying that he has lost his glasses and needs help finding them. This is one of the first tasks that you can undertake within the game. Simply walking back to the kitchen, you soon find the glasses on the table which can then be returned to Daddy Pig. The tasks in My Friend Peppa Pig do not get any more complex throughout the entire game, for example, while visiting Peppa’s grandparents’ house you must locate three chickens to return to their coup, whereas in the Forest you have to collect rubbish to put in the bin.

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It’s all very simplistic and child-friendly but it’s a shame that these tasks don’t have you utilising other buttons on the controller, rather than just the one action button, as this could help teach your child more about the controller and its button layout.

If you have ever watched Peppa Pig you would know that her favourite game is jumping in muddy puddles (there is even a song about it) and it was a highlight for my daughter to get to do this with Peppa in My Friend Peppa Pig and see her character and Peppa get covered in mud. Again, this is performed by a simple press of the action button to keep jumping in the puddle yet I couldn’t help but think that this could have been a fun rhythm-based mini-game instead, adding a little more variety to the game. The glee on my daughter’s face from jumping in the puddles showed how much she enjoyed doing it but for older children, I could easily see the draw of playing within Peppa’s world soon wearing off as there is no complexity to playing the game.
My Friend Peppa Pig 3+1
Unlike when my daughter played Paw Patrol The Movie: Adventure City Calls – she didn’t once want to stop playing that game – after only 20 minutes of playing My Friend Peppa Pig, she was quite happy to stop playing the game and go and do something else. I can’t help but feel that this is because of the lack of variety to the gameplay as even the short vehicle sections that are included within the game, to try and offer a bit of variety while moving between locations either by car, bike or hot air balloon, are only controlled by moving the analogue stick in the correct direction as the vehicle moves across the screen.

All the locations that you visit, which includes going to the beach, playing with Peppa’s friends at Playgroup, having an educational visit to the Museum or visiting the fun-filled theme park – Potato City where you get to meet Mr Potato and ride on a roller coaster, all look exactly as they do in the show. There are a couple more locations to visit too, which makes a good amount of places to visit within My Friend Peppa Pig, however, each location only has a handful of story beats and things to interact with within them. This means that across three separate sittings my daughter had seen all the game had to offer in just over two hours, and that included completing the tasks to unlock Trophies and even get the Platinum Trophy (Trophy Hunters will love this game for a simple and short Platinum).

My Friend Peppa Pig, therefore, felt more like an interactive feature-length film than an actual game, with its shortness and lack of gameplay. Still, my daughter has watched the TV shows episodes repeatedly, so I’m sure she will get some replay value out of experiencing the game’s story again and just having fun playing alongside Peppa Pig. However, the £34.99 price tag for this game is very hard to stomach and is way too steep for such a short game.
My Friend Peppa Pig 4+1
I didn’t come across any performance issues while playing My Friend Peppa Pig and was impressed with how smooth the game ran, however, there are a few aspects to the game which are very tedious and annoying, especially for an adult playing along with their child. Loading is frequent when travelling between environments or moving into buildings, and they are way too long considering the basic nature of the game’s design. While travelling by car to different locations you can come across Mr Bull fixing the road. This scene is enjoyable seeing it once but not three times across one playthrough.

My main frustration is that you can’t skip dialogue within the game, so when you leave a location and return, the whole scene resets itself. I understand it does this because you may have initially missed a task that you can do, but having to have the same introductory conversation with Daddy Pig when visiting Peppa’s house each time is soul-destroying – even my daughter commented as to why Daddy Pig was explaining that he is Peppa’s daddy again.

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By default, the game sets the play timer, through the built-in parental controls, to 20 minutes. This means that once the allotted time is up, you and Peppa return to her house and go to bed. This is a good idea in theory, as it means you can control how long your child plays without actively being in the room with them, but it can lead to frustration as it’ll cut off the scene without warning and interrupt whatever you were in the middle of. As with my above comments about being unable to skip dialogue and the game repeating things each time you enter an area, this also happens once you resume playing the next day, resulting in your child having to go through things they may have already seen and done previously.

The timer can be set to 5, 10, 15 or 20 minutes, or simply set to zero if you want this feature disabled. It’s not particularly clear that returning home to go to bed is an indication that your child should stop – as you’ll have to inform them of that yourself – due to the fact you can simply wake up and continue playing. Initially, I thought it was a strange design choice until I realised it was happening due to the parental control option. If you want to fully restrict your child from playing after a set period, you may be best using the feature supplied on the console itself.

Official Trailer:

Final Conclusion:
Petoons Studio must be commended for creating such an authentic Peppa Pig experience with My Friend Peppa Pig. My daughter loved playing along with Peppa Pig and her friends, she was fascinated that she was controlling a game that looked identical to the cartoon that she enjoys so much. It was a fun experience for her but unfortunately lacked the variety and complexity to keep her engrossed for anything longer than a short period of time. As an adult, watching my child play was more tedious than expected, due to how much dialogue is repeated, but I was pleasantly surprised by how good the game looked and faithful it was to the cartoon.

Unfortunately, I can’t justify the steep price tag for the game that would have Daddy Pig rolling on the floor in pain rather than laughter.

A copy of the game was kindly provided for review purposes

My Friend Peppa Pig

£34.99
6

Final Score

6.0/10

The Good:

  • - Authentically Peppa Pig - it’s like playing the cartoon
  • - Vibrant visuals and well-known locations to visit
  • - Fun character creation
  • - Extremely simple for a child to play

The Bad:

  • - Incredibly short for the price tag
  • - Lack of gameplay variety
  • - Long load times
  • - Unskippable dialogue and scenes that reset
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