Hold On To Your Sack, Here's Another Bang-On Balls: Chronicles PS5 Review

How is Bang-On Balls: Chronicles still so criminally underrated? Hop on to the Steam store and check out the praise this game from Exit Plan Games has received. It’s pretty damn impressive, but when will it be available on the PS5? That’s what this is – a Bang-On Balls: Chronicles PS5 review.

Before the game was the colossal ball-busting open world it is now, it started with a stab at the Vikings. Not literally. Stop giggling about the title for a minute, as this is 100% a family-friendly experience, and there’ll be no Viking stabbings here. Now, out of its infancy, the game world is HUGE.

Bang-On Balls: Chronicles was always a console game. Yes, the PC is lovely and all, but it had so much more appeal when sat with your friends or family instead of around a pokey RGB-enabled desk caked in pubes and cans of Monster. Alas, lovers of balls, the transition to the PS5 wasn’t the dreamy open-world one had hoped.

Bang-On Balls: Chronicles Review PS5

Hold that thought: what is Bang-On Balls: Chronicles? It’s a massive open-world platformer full of playable spheres. Your avatar arrives on a film set and switches between genres, completing multiple objectives, freeing NPCs, collecting the elusive film reels, and then customising your character to the point where it feels like that’s the game. There are so many options in the style of LittleBigPlanet, a.k.a. cute ‘n’ cuddly.

There’s no real overwhelming story, as it’s so easy to get absorbed in the sandbox mentality. Head in any direction you want and find yourself so insanely distracted by the equivalent of a gaming sweet shop. Where do I start? It doesn’t matter – go and explore!

It’s easy to get lost in Bang-On Balls: Chronicles, and that’s a mixture of the level size and design. There’s lots to see and do for all the family (bleurgh! It’s true, though). However, consider playing online rather than local co-op. For all the superlatives that apply to this game, the split-screen camera is atrocious, prompting an appetite for destruction. No, not smashing up the levels with your balls, but rage-inducing.

A Kick In The Balls

The way that the camera rotates – automatic or manual – is infuriating. It had nothing to do with the other player occupying the space, nor had it anything to do with time enclosures or wide open spaces as I’d be balls-deep in the ground, seeing the hollow of my hero, and overall, it made me irritable. This experience was more Early Access than the actual Early Access version.

Knockback is also a problem. You’ll double-jump your way to the top of the tower and get such a pushback that you’ll probably give up and head somewhere else. This was disappointing as Bang-On Balls: Chronicles is a fantastic game on many levels. In our experience, the split-screen setup ruined it.

Jumping back into gear as a solo act was a much more pleasant experience. The gameplay mechanics have come on in leaps and bounds, and I hadn’t played the pirate realm at this point, so I was mightly impressed when darting around the sea on a log. The sheer chaos and destruction make up for the bad points, and seriously, the customisation is brilliant.

Bang-On Balls: Chronicles Review Summary

The PS5 can easily run Bang-On Balls: Chronicles, and it looks the part. However, those camera angles in the split-screen mode spoiled the local multiplayer experience. That said, and in fear of sounding contradictory, I still maintain that Bang-On Balls: Chronicles is one of the best modern open-world platform games from an indie developer.