{"id":20186,"date":"2020-06-15T00:01:01","date_gmt":"2020-06-15T00:01:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/?p=20186"},"modified":"2020-05-23T13:05:56","modified_gmt":"2020-05-23T13:05:56","slug":"pong-quest-switch-pc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/2020\/06\/15\/pong-quest-switch-pc\/","title":{"rendered":"PONG Quest (Switch, PC)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>For the longest time I thought the first video game I ever played was Pac-Man.\u00a0 But it was actually PONG, I just didn\u2019t realize it at the time.\u00a0 You see, when I was very little, my dad built our very first TV.\u00a0 He ordered parts and instructions through a place called Heathkit.\u00a0 This was in the late 70\u2019s, so it was a great big old wooden monster that looked like a piece of furniture.\u00a0 But that TV also lasted well until I was in high school!\u00a0 He also built a metronome with Heathkit, and one of the other extra things he added to the TV was a home PONG clone that you could pull out at any time and play if you changed it to channel 3.\u00a0 I was so young at the time, though, that I didn\u2019t realize this was a video game, just something you could do if there wasn\u2019t anything on TV.\u00a0 Anyway, that\u2019s my PONG story.\u00a0 Never would I have imagined that someone would combine PONG with a dungeon crawling RPG, but now you have PONG Quest.\u00a0 It\u2019s available for Switch and PC, but reviewed on Switch here.<\/p>\n

In the game, you\u2019re tasked with saving a kingdom full of talking paddles, and you are a paddle yourself.\u00a0 You can customize your paddle with colors and outfits (I especially like that there are red and green overalls), but all that is purely cosmetic and just for fun.\u00a0 You must venture into multi-floored randomly generated dungeons to defeat opponents and tackle a boss in each one.\u00a0 Sometimes dungeons have treasure chests with coins and balls for you to equip, and you can use those coins to buy new outfit parts and balls at shops randomly placed in the dungeons.\u00a0 Other times you might be able to play a small mini-game puzzle to earn more goodies in these mazes.\u00a0 Each floor in the dungeon also has a side quest to complete, like defeating all the monsters, NOT battling anyone, or mapping all the rooms on a floor.<\/p>\n

When you bump into an enemy paddle in the dungeons, a battle will ensue.\u00a0 These take the form of classic PONG matches.\u00a0 Each time you or the opponent hits the ball, you lose one hit point, but if you or the opponent miss the ball, you\u2019ll lose even more.\u00a0 Whoever loses all their hit points first, loses.\u00a0 Using the L and R buttons, you can switch out different balls that activate when you hit them.\u00a0 Some balls will heal you, while others deal extra damage or bounce in different ways.\u00a0 And some can provide other defensive and offensive capabilities.\u00a0 There are 50 different balls in all.\u00a0 The game can be challenging, especially if you\u2019re like me and aren\u2019t very good at PONG, but luckily if you lose a battle, the penalties aren\u2019t very harsh.\u00a0 You just get kicked out of the dungeon and must start the last floor over.\u00a0 If you win a battle, you gain experience points and when you level up you can choose upgrades like more hit points, extra slots to hold balls, and more.\u00a0 Defeated paddles can also drop coins, outfit parts, or balls.<\/p>\n

One of my favorite things about this game are the references to other Atari titles in the gameplay.\u00a0 The first dungeon in a prison with lots of colored blocks.\u00a0 You must fight a lot of enemies who use blocks that you must hit with the ball to clear them, just like BreakOut!\u00a0 The BreakOut cabinet even had a picture of a guy breaking out of prison, so that was a neat touch.\u00a0 The next dungeon is called the Crawling Forest, and enemies use mushrooms and centipedes to block your way!\u00a0 Other subtle references include Asteroids and the 2600 QuestWorld games!<\/p>\n

Aside from the main quest, you can also challenge up to four friends in updated PONG matches, as well as the classic black and white game.\u00a0 You can even battle online.\u00a0 Only problem with the game is that it\u2019s a bit repetitive and the dungeon crawling is uninspired.\u00a0 Back in the PSOne days, there was another PONG remake that was just as creative as this, if not more so.\u00a0 But if you really like classic gameplay and are good at PONG, you may want to check this out anyway.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Kid Factor:<\/strong><\/p>\n

You can whittle down other paddles\u2019 hit points down by bouncing a ball into them, and defeated characters just lean over or fall down with a sad face.\u00a0 So yeah, not very violent at all.\u00a0 Reading skill is helpful for the text, and younger gamers may find it too difficult or repetitive.\u00a0 PONG Quest is rated E for Everyone.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For the longest time I thought the first video game I ever played was Pac-Man.\u00a0 But it was actually PONG, I just didn\u2019t realize it at the time.\u00a0 You see, when I was very little, my dad built our very first TV.\u00a0 He ordered parts and instructions through a place called Heathkit.\u00a0 This was in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":20184,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20186","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-game-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20186","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20186"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20186\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20188,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20186\/revisions\/20188"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20184"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20186"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20186"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20186"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}