Imagine the joy you felt playing Untitled Goose Game for the first time, then imagine playing that with a friend. Sprinkle in a dash of Overcooked, a smattering of Crazy Taxi (or The Simpsons: Road Rage) and you'll get a good idea of the terrific fun that can be had with The Stretchers.
Out from nowhere, an hilarious joke, The Stretchers is a fun and clever two players game, with an ideal pace and constant renewal. Whether cutting across the fields with the turbo throttle and the waving gyro's siren or consulting on how to take the casualty right back to the ambulance by the craziest method, The Stretchers is a success and is one of the most entertaining duet games of recent years, in the same category as the hilarious Gang Beasts and Heave Ho.
This underrated gem **** lands somewhere left of the middle between Crazy Taxi on the Sega Dreamcast and the comics of Joan Cornellà. Literally the first real Laugh Out Loud moments since I’ve owned a Nintendo Switch occurred today during our first session with this game. Recommended game for 2 player couch coop with your younger kiddo. My 6 year old held up really well and the 9 year old aced it. We had so many laughs, great stuff!
The game is pretty good. Not so much arguing as a game like overcooked. The only thing is the game is a little short. Would wish for a few more levels. It’s cool how you can travel around the map and find cool Easter eggs as well.
A blast whether you play it by yourself or with a friend, The Stretchers is bound to put a smile on the face of anyone that plays it and showcases how talented a developer Tarsier Studios is.
The Stretchers is a very original, casual and fun idea, which can be enjoyed alone but shines especially in the two-player mode. Unfortunately, the experience will be short.
The Stretchers may not be the deepest experience, but its creativity comes through in spades, giving you a great challenge to experience with a friend. Its solo mode doesn’t function well, the game is overall fairly short, and the controls are not always reliable, but the game manages to pack so much into its runtime that you may not find yourself caring.
In reality, for the hour or so I enjoyed the game with a friend, we were on the same page for most every mission. However, the fickle nature of the controls kept us from completing these missions as quickly as possible.
The Stretchers is a jovial, anarchic affair. It looks like a Dreamcast title and, in some respects, feels like playing one too. That comparison isn't meant as a pejorative to say it's dated, as it isn't, and certainly it has a charm all of its own. Despite some small annoyances, it is the freshness, and an arcade-y fun-ness that feels like something off of Sega's last console. This is brimming with engaging ideas, which constantly build on or mix up the core mechanic, which taken on its own merits is strong.
The stretchers is a physics-based two-players co-op slapstick.
CONS:
IT GETS REPETITIVE: While the game does introduce a few new elements over time, they're not enough to offset the repetition. After the first few missions, the rest is basically more of the same.
VERY LITTLE CHALLENGE: This is a game for families. Don't expect to be challenged in any way–and considering the imprecise controls, that's for the better.
PROS:
FUN IN THE FAMILY: This game shines when played by two people with good communication, even if one of them isn't a "gamer". The borderline-casual gameplay will provide a few hours of fun.
FUNNY SLAPSTICK MOMENTS: The characters' antics and the ragdoll physics will get old eventually–but you will laugh a lot before they do.
ZANY HUMOR: From the inventor in his underwear to the unlikely baddie, the characters are weird enough to make The Stretchers stand out from other recent ragdolly games.
The premise is great, and the animations and rag doll physics initially create hilarious situations and moments. Two main issues bring the game down though:
1. The controls are simply too finicky. You're meant to press a button to grab the nearest object, whether it's a door, a chair or a person's foot, but more often than not, the character ends up grabbing something else than you intended. It's simply not intuitive enough.
2. Although you get a score at the end of each mission, you're not told if you did well or not. Giving out bronze/silver/gold depending on your score would have done a lot to the replayability and enjoyment. As it is now, you don't really care if you did okay or not, and it all gets a little pointless as it's not a challenging game to begin with.
Fixing these issues and a few other details could really have made this game amazing! You can still have fun if you're fun people playing, and driving your ambulance on the fully explorable island between missions is a great addition that adds variation and "meat" to the experience, but all in all, it's hard to recommend unless you've already played all the other great co-op games on Switch (the Overcooked! games come to mind) and crave even more.