Pong Quest (Nintendo Switch)

Pong Quest, the team at Atari took what was initially an April Fools joke and ran with it. Was it worth the gamble or is it a bit Pongy?

So what exactly is Pong Quest? Well we all know Pong, bat vs bat, knocking a ball back and forth, well imagine if you slapped a story and some light RPG elements and item management to that, yeah!. 

Pong Quest casts you as the Hero Paddle, the King Paddle sends you off on an epic, meme and 4th Wall breaking quest which will prove who is the Pingiest Ponger of them all!. 

In all fairness the story does have moments where you’ll chuckle with it, as long as you don’t expect anything on the grand RPG scale, you should be quite surprised.

Graphically I’m fairly sure you can expect what the game will look like, rather than the fancy and quite intimidating 3D Pong of the PSX era, its back to basics. The game has bits of scenary but for the most part its blank screens, with paddles on them in outfits. 

The outfits you can wear in the game are quite amusing and range from generic hero to Red or Green Plumber, original idea I know!. The designs do help differentiate the Paddles and gives them their own personalities. 

Pong Quest if you haven’t already guessed is Pong, the bulk of your time is playing matches of Pong. Instead of just automatically losing if you miss, you’ll lose hit points. 

Because this is a Quest and they are often associated with RPGs and thus items appear. These come in the form of different balls which usually have an effect when you hit them. You also gain EXP from battles and level up, just like an RPG but with more PONG.

You explore dungeons, fight monsters and even run into other Atari characters. While initially fun and quirky, repetition sets in long before credits role on this one.

There are a range of multiplayer options including an online multiplayer should you get the hankering to take your Pong skills on the world wide web and smash some fools, you know if you want?.

Pong Quest isn’t a terrible game by any stretch, it’s just a bit blah. It gets real boring real quick and the Quest aspect just bogs it down further rather than what was intended. If you really need a Pong fix I would suggest getting a compilation title instead of this, unless you want a quirky yet repetitive in equal parts title.