If I ate a bowl of spaghetti with the same ferocity as playing through Freddy Spaghetti 2 from Ratalaika Games, it might be worth entering one of those speed-eating competitions. Ok, so the experience wasn’t rushed, but within about an hour, it was all over.
This was the first time playing a Freddy Spaghetti title, but not the first time playing with the food. Unlike sucking one noodle through one nostril and out the other, the type of play on offer in the game revolves around office-based mini-games.
Perhaps a little misleading either in the promotional material or my interpretation, Freddy is not hired as a coffee expert, but they are hired to do a multitude of jobs within the workplace, play a few games and wind the boss up.
Freddy Spaghetti 2 Review
Freddy Spaghetti 2 plays out like something from The Office. There are talking head segments where the boss seemingly talks to an interviewer, or perhaps you, explaining why they gave this conscious piece of spaghetti a role in their workplace. They allocate you, Freddy, several dog’s body duties such as fixing the servers by slapping them, mending the photocopier and moving stock about.
Without any opposable thumbs and various other motor skills to do a variety of jobs, Freddy mostly slaps stuff about or using their explosive power to get around the floor space, upstairs and swimming in fish tanks. There’s no solid plot, but a linear narrative sees Freddy through from his hiring to, *spoiler* firing. But it’s not all work, work, work as Freddy’s a bit of a matchmaker too.
There’s an office romance underway, and Freddy is at the root of it, egging on Jack and Jill to ‘will they, won’t they status’. So Freddy’s a good guy then? Sure, but he’s not without a poor work ethic – presumably because he does the jobs nobody else wants to, or maybe it’s because he’s a piece of spaghetti? As mentioned above, he’ll jump into the fish tank – for what purpose, nobody knows, then get water everywhere. Other times he’ll be goofing off by playing a game of table tennis or foosball.
Right, that clears up what happens in the game, but how do you play Freddy Spaghetti 2? There are two buttons required, at least on the PS5 version reviewed, L1 and R1. Holding them down will project Freddy into the air, either by doing one at a time or both simultaneously for an explosive jump. The power of the movement is measured with a circular gauge, and with the left analogue stick, you can aim the trajectory.
Spaghetti Physics
The physics element of the game works well, to be fair. Advertised as rope physics or dynamics – take your pick, Freddy will flap about, landing in so many unique positions. One could surmise that this would be a nightmare – as if playing a game of Gang Beasts or Clumsy Rush with unpredictable controls, but it’s very accurate. This could potentially be a flaw in the game as it means you can complete each of the 40 missions in less than a minute – the maximum we got to was just under two minutes, not knowing what to do.
It’s possible to have a visual aid (as Freddy has no distinguishing features – is he a boy?), a green dot on one side and a yellow one on the other. Green represents the L1 button and yellow for R1. Turning these off makes the game a bit more unpredictable, and therefore, challenging, but you’ll likely keep these on so that you can see what you’re doing. As stated, the movement is accurate, so the overall difficulty is very much on the easy side. I paired up taking turns with my four-year-old, and aside from some increasingly difficult sports games, she aced them without assistance.
Said games – foosball and pong, get a little tricky as you have to return the ball a set number of times before completing the challenge. After every movement, you’ll remain stationary, so you have to catapult yourself into position in preparation for each hit. It took a few attempts but even then, totally manageable and will fast-track you to a platinum if you so desire. The only other challenge was deciphering what to do (like the fish tank) and being behind or underneath an object, so you must guess which way you’re going. Intentional design, of course.
Freddy Spaghetti 2 is a fun game with excellent physics and accuracy – the floor is lava challenge made good use of this. Watching a piece of spaghetti dangling off a table edge and sliding off was brilliant. However, it’s a bit of a novelty, and considering the easy difficulty and lack of any extra features, this is the kind of game that you may only play through once. That said, it’s an enjoyable one and worth a look.
