There’s a game called Pong Quest that combines the classic competition arcade game with dungeon crawling. It’s as odd a combination as it sounds, and sadly it didn’t impress TheGamer’s reviewer. She played the game on PC back in April, and found flaws in pretty much the whole experience. The “story” of a genderless, customizable pong paddle questing for a paddle king never achieved the humor it was going for. Constant Pong as a central mechanic ended up being a slog. And, most odd of all, the game was buggy.
In her review, fellow editor Bella Blondeau reported that she played Pong Quest on a PC with an NVIDIA GTX 1080. This is a machine that she regularly plays Apex Legends on, yet Pong Quest skipped. Framerate issues are bad in any game, but Pong in particular suffers for them. Bella found that the ball would clip as it traveled, causing her to miss crucial shots. Again, she runs a good setup, so it’s unlikely her own computer was causing the problems. However, this issue seems to be nonexistent on the Nintendo Switch.
I was given a copy of the Switch version of Pong Quest to test out for myself. So far, it runs perfectly. Whether it be in docked or handheld mode, nothing skips and I’m able to keep track of the ball at all times (unless the enemy uses the blasted invisible ball). And many Steam reviews don’t mention performance issues, so it seems that maybe they were patched out at some point. Unfortunately, neither the Nintendo Switch or any possible patches can save Pong Quest from its tedious core gameplay.
Pong is a fun game, an evergreen classic due to its simple objective; Hit the ball into the opponent’s side while avoiding it going into your own. It’s easy to understand yet allows for many paths to victory, making it universal like sports. It’s not so universally fun, however, that it can be the combat system in a grindy RPG.
Pong Quest challenges you to take on multi-floor dungeons with a big boss at the end. These bosses sport wonderfully creative variations on Pong, but come super buffed. Bouncing back the Pong ball costs HP, meaning you’re at risk the longer a match goes. But bosses have tons of HP, meaning you need to level up to keep up. You also need to collect the right ball power ups to trick out your shots and outdo the bosses. In true RPG fashion, XP and items mostly come from battles. So be prepared to play lots of quick Pong matches against wandering “monsters.”
If you love Pong, then grab the Nintendo Switch version of Pong Quest. It seems to be the most optimized version, and might benefit from the on-the-go gameplay the Switch offers. But you have to REALLY love Pong, because the quest demands a lot of it.
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