Get Packed: Couch Chaos

Genre: Top-Down Arcade / Party Game

Players: 1-4 Co-Op / Competitive (Local)

.

Review:

Get Packed is a family-friendly Top-Down Arcade / Party Game that has players scrambling to remove items from a property and toss them into a moving truck. The game was originally released on Stadia in 2020, then ported to PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One in 2021 with the subtitle Fully Loaded. Finally, the game made its way to Nintendo Switch in 2022 with the new subtitle Couch Chaos, adding a collection of minigames to the package.

This is of course far from the first time that we’ve seen a Party Game with the focus on moving items out of a house, with 2020’s Moving Out in particular coming to mind. However, Get Packed distinguishes itself with its much faster pace and less of a focus on meticulous and careful removal of stuff from the property – in this game, it plays more like a crazed dash to try and throw as much into your truck as possible before your time is up. That’s not to say that damaged property can’t hurt your overall score, but this seems like a secondary consideration to just trying to get as much stuff loaded as possible.

The game adds an interesting mechanic to the mix with its “flat-packing”, which can magically transform any item held with two hands into a relatively small-sized cardboard box. In theory, this could make for some wonderful new strategy, as you can decide which property requires this treatment and which doesn’t. However, in practice, it’s a bit cumbersome and more trouble than it’s worth – not only do you need to ensure that your character places both hands on the object (which can be difficult in the fast-paced chaos), but once transformed into a box, the item needs to be brought to the moving truck quickly or it gets undone, and if it’s dropped it instantly changes back. What’s more, this move has a 15-second cooldown, and in co-op this cooldown is shared by all characters.

However, while Co-Op in this game is a blast, what I would argue is even more fun is the competitive mode, where players are competing to take the best stuff from the house and pack it into their own truck, making it like a giddy competitive shopping spree of sorts. Honestly, I felt this was the absolute highlight of this game, and this mode more than anything is what will make this game a great addition to your Party Game rotation.

What doesn’t work so well are the minigames. They range from decent but simple and ineffectual to poorly conceived and outright bad. It’s like they tried to take the gameplay of the core game and force it into other game types that don’t really befit that gameplay.

The other complaint I have here is a lack of content in the core game – with only 18 levels in the campaign, the main game here will be over very quickly for everyone but the score-chasers looking to earn full marks on every level. This is all the more reason to focus on this game’s competitive multiplayer mode, which I feel should offer tons of great replay value.

I suppose I should take a moment to comment on the presentation here, which is pretty decent. The game uses simple 3D visuals with a colorful slightly-cartoony look, but while individually nothing here impresses, the sheer amount of stuff in the environments keeps things interesting, and it’s wonderful the game makes it so parts of the environment interact – tearing a stop sign out of the ground and holding it up in the street can stop traffic, and putting an explosive in front of a speeding forklift race can cause a destructive pile-up. These visuals are joined by cartoony sound effects and a bouncy soundtrack that works well enough for the game without being memorable.

In the end, I thoroughly enjoyed Get Packed on Nintendo Switch, but perhaps not for the reasons some may expect. The couch co-op here is good, but there’s not enough content here to last very long, and the minigames are at best disposable. The competitive multiplayer, on the other hand, is an absolute delight, and a great reason to add this game to your Party Game rotation.

tl;dr – Get Packed is a family-friendly Top-Down Arcade / Party Game that has players scrambling to remove items from a property and toss them into a moving truck. The co-op gameplay here is good, but lacking content in a way that ensures it won’t last long. The competitive gameplay, on the other hand, is delightful enough to earn this game a proper spot in your Party Game rotation.

Grade: B+

^{You can support eShopperReviews on Patreon! Please click HERE to become a Sponsor!}

^{This month’s sponsors are Ben, Andy Miller, Exlene, Homer Simpin, Johannes, Francis Obst, Gabriel Coronado-Medina, Ilya Zverev, Jared Wark, Kristoffer Wulff, and Seth Christenfeld. Thank you for helping to keep the reviews coming!}