Sonic Pico Park Scores 34/40 in Famitsu Review Round

The scores, read closely

Sonic Pico Park landed a strong result in the latest Famitsu review round, with four editors giving it 9, 8, 9, and 8 for a total of 34 out of 40. Sumikkogurashi Welcome to Poka Poka Onsen trailed at 29, with scores of 7, 7, 8, and 7. That's a five-point gap on a forty-point scale, and it's bigger than it looks at first glance. Every editor scored Sonic Pico Park higher than the Sumikkogurashi title, which is a more telling pattern than one enthusiastic outlier would be. Four reviewers is a small sample (and this is the part most people overlook when they read a headline score), but a result that holds across the whole panel is harder to dismiss as one person's mood.

Why the crossover works

Here's the thing: Pico Park's relaxed, cooperative puzzling doesn't obviously pair with Sonic's breakneck pace. The reviewers argue the two halves don't dilute each other. Spin dashes and loop-heavy courses inject real velocity into the group play, and that speed is where the fun comes from. One reviewer says the combination "doubles the fun," and the high-speed blunders that follow only add to the laughter. Pairing a slow-burn puzzle format with a franchise built on speed is a risky move, and I'd be skeptical of any mashup that feels more like branding than design. Co-op party games tend to live or die on how often players get in each other's way, so a faster tempo could easily tip into noise. From the way the reviewers describe it, the noise is part of the appeal.

Sonic-specific gimmicks show up in the courses, and some characters can fly or glide, which smooths out difficulty and opens up more ways to cooperate. Similar co-op games usually get their depth from character abilities rather than from quietly lowering the difficulty, and that's the design bet here. When a stronger player can carry a weaker one across a gap, a solo obstacle becomes a shared problem, and that's where the teamwork actually starts. The mini-games and battles round out the package, though the battle mode gets the lightest praise. I'd read that as a sign the designers' energy went into the main course, not the sidebars.

The friction points

Not everyone will love the handling, and that's worth taking seriously rather than shrugging off. Reviewers flag controls that respond too sensitively and are hard to stop once a dash begins. That's classic Sonic, but it also produces messy collisions between players. Anyone who's played a physics-heavy platformer with friends knows how fast one bad dash can knock three people off a ledge. If you're bringing this to a living room full of people who've never held a controller, expect a few rounds of pure chaos before anyone's communicating properly.

The same trait has a useful side, too. Character-specific actions help newcomers, and in some stages they're essential to solving the puzzle. That's a tricky balance: the mechanic that causes the collisions is also the one that keeps less experienced players from getting stuck. The battle mode, as one reviewer puts it, feels like an afterthought, but that's part of its charm. Here's where I'd push back a little. Calling a mode an afterthought isn't much of a complaint when the main draw is cooperative play, and the lightest praise tells you where the attention went. And yet nobody's really buying a party game for its battle mode anyway.

A sequel that outgrew its roots

One reviewer admits to worrying when the original Pico Park: Classic Edition was permanently free on Steam, a release that's no longer available. That's a fair worry. Giving a game away for free often reads as a signal that it isn't worth paying for, and a sequel has to overcome that perception before anyone argues about its features. Their verdict now is that the free game built a fanbase large enough to produce this follow-up, and that's a rare feat for a co-op title.

If Sonic Pico Park keeps its speed without losing the teamwork, it's a strong pick for groups who want chaos with a little strategy mixed in. That's a narrower audience than "everyone," and I think that's the honest way to frame it. Co-op titles that try to please solo players, competitive players, and party crowds at once usually end up satisfying none of them well. Sticking to one job, and doing it with energy, is the smarter bet.

What this means for you

If you're deciding what to bring to the next game night, the pitch is simple: this one is built for noise, speed, and the occasional argument about who caused the pit. The scores suggest the crossover mostly works, and the friction points are real but predictable. Expect the first session to be rough and the fourth to be the one everybody remembers. That's not a flaw, though it's a fair warning.

The bigger question is whether this pairing becomes a template for future co-op games or stays a one-off. I'd bet on one-off, mainly because mixing a franchise's identity with another genre's rhythm is hard to repeat without it feeling forced. But I'd happily be wrong. Either way, the review round gives you a clear read: four editors, one consistent direction, and a sequel that seems to have inherited the goodwill of its free predecessor.