Review: Pico Park 2 Is Great in Certain Situations

Pico Park 2 randos are the worst. Do you know how many multiplayer sessions I went into with the general public? About 20. Do you know how many of them were successful? Seven. In some cases, that only happened because everyone except for one other person and myself stayed in the level to finish it. Conversely, playing the game two-player with another trusted individual ended up being quite enjoyable! Truly, Pico Park 2 is a Switch game where who you play with and how matters.

Pico Park 2 looks a lot like the first game, and it plays a lot like it too! Each person in a session, which supports up to eight people, picks an animal-like avatar. Your goal is to either get through the 60 World levels, face off in the eight Battle games, or continually go through the Endless challenges. You’re often working together, aside from Battle, but the thing about the title is that it could be good at ruining friendships or making you hate other players depending on how well everyone cooperates. 

In general, each Pico Park 2 stage involves acquiring a key so you can open a door and progress. How you get that key can vary. Some involve platforming challenges. You may need to dodge, move into certain positions, hit switches, work with your fellowing players without touching them, or complete tasks in a timely fashion. Others can feel more like minigames, with tasks such as getting a certain time together, aiming balls at baskets, or shooting down opponents. Stages are typically rather short, so you can go through a lot together! This is especially beneficial in World or Endless modes, when you’re picking at stages or just continually playing. In the World stages it can make the experimental nature of some situations, during which you find out where the dangers lie, easier to bear. The concepts are fun, you can really feel how it built off the original Pico Park, and it is generally enjoying.

In most cases, the challenge comes from three points. One is figuring out the controls, as stages that involve shooting or other actions won’t tell you which button to press. (It’s X on a Switch!) Another involves gauging distance or momentum, as there will be jumping challenges where factoring in character placement or physics can determine your success. But the real difficulty comes from other people. 

Even if you do play Pico Park 2 in an ideal situation like I did, with someone who you can trust to make good decisions, sometimes it is frustrating! There are certain levels that can be infuriating due to the parameters, execution, or limitations regarding timing or distances. When I played, 50% of the time I worked alongside someone who was as practical, reasonable, and experienced as I was. There were still some stages, especially in the final area in World, that felt unpleasant. Even when we did manage to accomplish the goal, get the key, and reach the next task, it was so annoying that I felt a handful of stages weren’t much fun. The 50% of the time I played with random people in a public match, it was infuriating if it wasn’t a Battle stage.

What I will say is that if you aren’t doing well with your chosen group playing, it won’t be due to connection issues. Whether I played alone with randoms in a public game or privately with one other person, the Pico Park 2 connection was fantastic on the Switch. My ping was routinely in the 40s, and even sometimes in the low 50s! Considering you’ll always be playing with others and very likely often online, that’s quite reassuring.

It means that Pico Park 2, much like the original game, is a “your mileage may vary” title depending on who joins you when you play. If you have a group of four people who can all be in the same room together, it might be absolutely incredible. Especially if they are all familiar with the series and experienced with how games like this work. If you’re only playing with one other person, it could still be great! But you won’t get the full experience and might be frustrated sometimes. I 100% suggest not playing this with random individuals. Even though the in-game messaging system is competent and I had a decent ping playing on the Switch against others, randos are a nightmare in Pico Park 2 and ruin the experience.

Pico Park 2 is available on the Nintendo Switch, and it will come to the Xbox One, Xbox Series X, and PC on September 12, 2024.