As a fan of weird, obscure, niche games, preferably from the early 2000s, stumbling on Poinie's Poin thanks to a Vinesauce video felt like finding a buried treasure. This is a full-on 3D platformer that only released in Japan, has barely anything about it on the internet, and yet was somehow not only published by Sony themselves but got itself an english dub. But the icing on the cake is the fact that it's also just straight-up a great game.
Okay, how do I explain Poinie's Poin? So as I said, Poinie's Poin is a Sony published game that released in Japan, though it also came with an English dub somehow which is how I'm able to experience it. It's a really absurd, nonsensical, and weird game especially in its story. The general premise is that you play as a little kid named Poinie who has to use floating emotion bubbles called Poins to fix the emotions of everyone in the world, while also stopping those responsible for messing them up in the first place. It doesn't sound too crazy at first, until you get into the talking duck tail Poinie gets to help him carry around Poins, the fact that Poinie can only speak in one-liners, the mind-boggingly weird side cast, and one of the most unhinged scripts I've ever seen in a video game. Seriously, here is some of the dialogue in Poinie's Poin:
There is no logic to the dialogue in this game, characters will just spout out whatever they want, whenever they want, and it's glorious. As nonsensical as it is, this might also be one of the funniest and most quotable video game scripts of all time, just for the sheer audacity of it all. But despite how wild the story can get, it also has a surprisingly genuine central theme of found family. Much of the main cast of Poinie's Poin are people who have lost family in some way. Poinie lost his mom and can't find her, Lolo is an alien stranded on what I'm assuming is Earth and estranged from her sister, the rival gang Poinie eventually befriends are basically all orphans, and their caretaker lost her son. Even with all the weirdness at play in Poinie's Poin, the bonds that Poinie and his new group of friends form throughout the game is genuinely really heart-warming and I found it hard not to care for these absolute weirdos by the end.
As far as the actual gameplay goes, Poinie's Poin is basically a linear puzzle platformer where you traverse a bunch of levels saving people and fighting a boss at the very end. Each level is entirely unique and fun to explore, from a drained lake, to a kitchen, to a downward ski slope, to a distorted haunted house. Despite that, though, my personal favorite level is actually the hub, this big colorful town filled with NPCs and buildings to enter. As you progress through the game, the town opens up more and more, giving you even more to discover. Heck, even after the game is finished, you're still unlock new stuff in the town like a secret slide minigame and a theater with unique skits to watch. It's probably one of my favorite hubs in a 3D platformer.
The actual meat of the gameplay is pretty simple. All you can really do is jump and pick up/throw Poins to solve certain context-sensitive puzzles and rescue people, but there is a bit of extra depth in the fact that you can use Poins as platforms and bounce off them with extra height. With enough precision in where I placed the Poins I was given, I was actually able to make some pretty major shortcuts in some of the levels, and even explore certain areas before I was supposed to. Not unlike the similarly slow-paced puzzle platformer, Blinx The Timesweeper, there's actually a lot of speedrunning potential in Poinie's Poin and I feel like I'm only scratching the surface with what I can do.
Then there's the bosses. I'd say Poinie's Poin's boss lineup is easily the highlight of the game, all being super creative, inventive, and fun. Some aren't even actual fights and instead have you use the Poins to help someone out with something like cooking or building a house, it's really cool. And there's a lot of them too, a whopping eleven fights within a roughly five-hour campaign. But what makes the fights even better is that, just like with the levels, there's a lot of shortcuts to making fights end faster through clever position of the Poins. And it's actually intentional too:
After every fight, Poinie's Poin grades you based on how quickly you beat the boss and how many people you've saved getting there. As you get graded, your score rises as you move up the ranks, and the ultimate goal is to get all the way to Eclair rank. You really have to learn the bosses to get the best rank and figure out all the shortcuts towards defeating them fast and without getting hurt too much, and it gives the game a ton of replayability despite its short length. It's a very Luigi's Mansion 1-style of adding replay value by encouraging the player to keep doing playthroughs and hone their skills.
Presentation-wise, I think Poinie's Poin looks absolutely amazing. It's super colorful and cartoony, really capturing that Y2K Dreamcast look that I love so much. Every single stage looks visually distinct from the neon swirls of Guru-Guru Jungle to the papercraft look of Panorama Gardens, and it all culminates in a final level that looks straight out of Space Channel 5. The music is also really great, it's a fun and peppy blend of pop and DnB, with a ton of catchy overworld themes and energetic boss music. There's a lot of great tunes here but some of my favorites include Nightmare Vision, Panorama Gardens, John's Lake, Snow Land, and Save Mama.
Let's get this straight, a pretty massive chunk of Poinie's Poin's appeal is its weirdness. Its strange premise, surreal visuals, bonkers script, and fascinating yet unknown development are part of the charm. But what makes it one of my favorite games ever is the fact that it's also just genuinely fun. Behind the silly scenarios the game puts you through hides a fun gameplay loop with surprising amount of hidden depth, behind the bizarre script is a genuinely likable cast of characters and some really fun and smart dialogue, and behind the acid trip color scheme lies one of the prettiest games on the PS2. It's the best of both worlds, both a weird obscure title from the early 2000s and a well-made platformer at the same time.
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