One of the best things to come out of the PS4/Xbox One generation of gaming is that local co-op games made a new niche for themselves following the Overcooked formula. Pick a scenario, give everyone a crazy amount of things to juggle under a time limit and watch the carnage that follows. Several have followed this trend but few can match the Overcooked 2 perfection. One that does – is Moving Out.
This 1-4 player moving sim lets you take control of moving various household items into your moving van within a time limit to complete the level. Houses are like mini fun mazes with swimming pools to drown in, icy slopes to slide down and tricky shaped rooms to carry a sofa through. The basic premise sounds simple but with cartoon physics and smashable windows, things get fun quickly.
Moving Out has two very distinct parts to each level. Firstly, getting your objects to the van is tricky enough. When playing multiplayer, larger objects require two people to hold, like a sofa or a piano. They also therefore require co-ordination! Of course, whilst you are busy squashing your mate against the living room wall, time is ticking and its likely the family dog is getting in the way. Once you’ve got the item to your often too small van, there is a secondary element of trying to arrange all the items to fit inside it! Sometimes, the difference between clearing the time limit can be down to this organisation skill as you throw smaller items ont op of bigger ones and hope they stay still. Throwing and carrying items are the name of the game here and Moving Out does them well.
One of thee best parts of Moving Out is how accessible and scalable the game is. You can tackle the game as a solo person and all items are light and liftable. You can also tweak the difficulty to change some of the houses obstacles too with kid mode. This removes things like flame throwers that dynamically move and replaces them with static obstacles to avoid. There’s also a kids control scheme and some colour/iconography changes too so its really impressive how accessible the game is to everyone.
Thankfully, it also plays like a dream. Your characters are responsive. Throwing takes a bit of skill as you can swing items and then let go of them which will determine how far they go. Each level has extra tasks for bonus stars too such as shooting hoops, rounding up chickens or smashing/not smashing windows. Whilst levels aren’t going to always tax you to get a basic clearance to continue, getting three stars will. Replayabilty can also be found with the arcade that you unlock through the campaign mode. This gives you randomised hardcore challenges and a ‘trapped inside a video game’ isometric platform adventure to enjoy. These are good fun but the main enjoyment and time will still be had throwing a bed out of your second story window. There is something very satisfying about seeing a toaster head unplugging an oven and then throwing it out a window. It’s the little graphical details of the plug pinging out after being stretched that really adds to Moving Out’s charm.
Whilst online multiplayer is missing, Moving Out doesn’t suffer from it because its clearly designed to be played with everyone in one room. If that can’t be done, Parsec, remote play and shareplay can ease the burden. Put simply, Moving Out is probably the best Overcooked style game that isn’t Overcooked 2 – and its better balanced and more accessible in some cases too. Don’t sleep on this one local multiplayer fans – it is gold.
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