Nelly Cootalot: The Fowl Fleet Review (Switch)

An icon of the point and click genre and a great example of comedy gold is now available on the Switch console for you to enjoy a more "hands-on" approach to the game

I love point and click adventure games because they are one of those game genres which you can only enjoy once. Once you've solved all the puzzles and figure out where everything goes, you can pretty much go through it again in less than a quarter of the time. That's exactly the feeling that I got when I tried Nelly Cootalot: The Fowl Fleet, as my second run was completed in under 4 hours while my first run took me an entire day to figure out. Admittedly, the game has been out on PC for some time already, but I never got word of the series until I heard of the Switch release.

Get ready to laugh

I have to admit that no ab exercise will ever give me the gut pain I got from laughing as much as I did while playing this game. Everywhere you go and anyone you talk to is a perfect chance to drop a joke that involves pop culture references, breaking the fourth wall, or just making no sense to the point where it gets hilarious. If you're just in for a speed run, then be warned that you will be pretty much missing out on 90% of what the game has to offer. Of course, less than 5 minutes into the game I realized that maybe the reason why it put so much emphasis on the comedy part was because you needed to cool off because of the mind-bending puzzles you needed to solve.

Get ready for a headache

Being a point and click game, you control your character and make him interact with the environment by pointing the cursor and clicking whatever it is you are interested in. Full disclosure: I needed to watch some walkthroughs on YouTube in order to finish the game (still needed a day though). You can pick up objects, combine the ones that are compatible with each other, or give them to other NPCs. The problem is that not all objects are visibly available, others become available after you trigger certain events, and some are available from the start but are only needed the very end of the level.

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The way the objects get used together also make use of the game's comedic sense, so try thinking outside the box at all times, and don't constrain yourself using logic or reason. Spoiler alert: To get an idea on how the game goes, in order to get the T-shirt from a sailor, you need to provide him with a chest wig which you make by washing a dirty old rag, and this is just one of the many "What in God's name...." moments you will be experiencing.

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The transition to Switch

There's a reason why point and click games are called "point and CLICK," since the trying to play through the game using the controller sticks can become a chore, and selecting the wrong option will be something you will frequently do. The good news is that you can also play the game by using the console's touchscreen, which I wholeheartedly advise you do from start to finish, unless you want the Switch to end up colliding with a wall at high speed due to personal frustration. As far as performance goes, the game moves impeccably, although given the graphics, that was to be expected anyway. The only issue I found a bit  bothersome was that transitioning between maps had rather long loading times, especially considering that there aren't too many elements that need loading anyways.

The Good

The Bad

Conclusion