Goodbye Volcano High Review: Dino Crisis
On crepe paper, Goodbye Volcano High boasts a myriad of promising ingredients that could’ve made for quite the luscious narrative adventure layer cake. There’s a high-school setting, nods to the Guitar Hero and Life is Strange franchises, it’s gentle in telling its tale, and it’s a very accessible experience anybody can enjoy. However, a raft of kinks threatens to squash this appetizing cake until it resembles a smushed mess. Can Goodbye Volcano High overcome its growing pains and mature into a storytelling adventure worth investing in, or is the decadence on display here permanently ruined despite its sweetness?
Starring a cast of anthropomorphic high school students of the vertebrate variety, Goodbye Volcano High follows a close-knit band of characters both figuratively and literally, as they are both a chummy group of friends and members of a rock band dubbed ‘Worm Drama,’ trying to garner acclaim in their final year of High School. Hanging over them though, is the doom and gloom of an oncoming asteroid and thus the extinction of dinosaurs as a whole. Undeterred, they attempt to go out with a pre-extinction bang whilst rocking, roleplaying and resolving relationship and band-related drama along the way.
Jurassic Snark
Goodbye Volcano High tells a pleasant story, featuring a cast of colourful and friendly High School characters, including the band members, non-binary protagonist and band leader Fang, guitarist and violet triceratops sweetheart Trish, and the velociraptor, grass-smoker, laid-back roleplaying nerd enthusiast and drummer Reed. Their endeavours in this coming-of-age tale are split between the business of promoting their band, but also spending time chatting casually and colloquially with each other about their goals and aspirations, but sliding in a few terrible jokes, puns and grating shavings from the Life Is Strange lexicon.
These dinos might be a bubbly bunch of buds, but they can yap on in perpetuity and not actually say anything. The big problem with Goodbye Volcano High is that it’s so nicey nice, and it can yack yack and yack on, but there isn’t a slither of substance in what they say. Many scenes contain the band speaking aimlessly for a long time at each other, where little drama or development takes place and it can drag on and become tiring to watch.
Also tiresome but not surprising, is that Fang loves using their mobile phone to text whether they are leisurely sitting on her bed staring at scrolling notifications from their pals, or they are in class trying to distract themselves from how boring their teacher is. While it’s perfectly understandable that anthropomorphic dinosaurs at high school would behave like a bunch of bratty post-pubescent teenagers, it’s a reminder that some terrible habits can seep into the fray. The fact there are no classes to attend on a regular basis is lamentable enough, but the obsession with phones while coherent with today’s youth culture, is a damning reminder of how distracting they are, especially when there’s unrest in reality due to the impending asteroid that threatens to make all the dinosaurs extinct.
Guitar Hero or Guitar Zero?
Thankfully, there are activities in Goodbye Volcano High that break up the monotony of characters droning on and on, and they mainly come in the form of musical performances not too dissimilar from Guitar Hero. At sporadic parts of the story, Fang and her band take to the stage to put on a show, which invariably means you’re going to be contending with time-sensitive sequences to register notes as they fly in from left, right, up, down and all over the screen.
The most common notes you need to watch out for are those that require you toggle the analogue stick in the direction of the note as it rapidly passes by. It’s best practice to hold the stick in the corresponding direction of the notes until they are correctly matched, otherwise, they’ll sail on by and a big red cross informs you of an unregistered input that’ll trigger a gnawing feeling of dissatisfaction rippling from under your breath. This type becomes easier once you’ve acclimated to the necessity of holding the stick direction in place, but Goodbye Volcano High’s timed button presses don’t stop there.
On top of registering cascading notes, there are face-button prompts that pop up on the screen containing an inner circle that reflects the colour of the face-button you need to jab; for example a pinkish circle means you’ll need to hit the square button as the outer circle converges towards the inner circle. This note type can pop up all over the screen like the zits on a sophomore teenager’s face, so be prepared to get overwhelmed as you juggle between the different variants. Oh yeah, there’s another stick-based assortment as well, where you need to click down the left and right sticks simultaneously as a descending arrow meets an awaiting arrow at the bottom of the screen.
As much as Goodbye Volcano High seems to love aping Guitar Hero, the bombardment of notes you need to hit becomes too visually busy and distracting to focus on that it’s very easy to miss consecutively because your attention is continuously diverted. There is some relief in knowing you can’t fail a song at all, which puts less stress and more pleasure into listening and playing along with the songs, but the hectic nature of the gameplay juxtaposes the welcoming and lovely aspects the game prides itself on.
Roleplaying Shame
During their downtime, Worm Drama and friends indulge in a fantastical roleplaying game named L&L. Essentially a D&D parody, L&L is all about mighty personas, mage magic and endless textbox dialogues dryly narrated by Reed. Much akin to the majority of the game, reading, scrolling and selecting desired dialogue options are your central means of interaction, which wouldn’t feel so monotonous if there was some zing to give pop to what can only harshly be described as a D&D ripoff.
Still, it’s a nice if nerdy change of pace, where the cast can let off creative energy and unleash some vitality to whisk themselves away from the depressing reality they all face. However, it’s hard to become invested in their flights of fancy, simply because it all comes across in a fake and non-immersive way. Reed’s narration sounds like he’s trying to inspire a group of kindergartners to use their imaginations instead of compelling us to gain interest in the roleplaying shenanigans.
Like the story aspects outside of the premise, L&L fails to engage and yaps on and on with nary a charismatic flicker. The decisions you get to make during these segment don’t motivate you in any way whatsoever to be entranced by the fiction within the fiction. L&L is plainly a nice idea poorly executed.
Emotionally-Charged Dinos
Oddly for a game with such dour subject matter, the dinosaurs of Goodbye Volcano High are glistening with an array of vibrant skin tones and attires. Fang looks like an emo-type with a spiky wristband acting as a hairband, Reed’s shaggy hair and headphones hanging from his neck make him seem like the typical teenager type, and Trish’s violet hair and face are accentuated in a way that lights up her facial features. To be brutal though, the merging of dinosaurs with human characteristics gives off a seriously ugly appearance to most of the characters that it might be too tempting to avert your eyes when you can. The animation style is too overly garish not to wince at. They kind of look like the Barbara Streisand robot dinosaur from that old South Park episode.
Musically, Goodbye Volcano High is fine, though similarities to Dontnod’s Life is Strange games are all too apparent. The tunes echo youth that is lost and uncertain about the world around them, which is befitting of the target audience, but the sense of edginess Fang evokes through their getup doesn’t run parallel with the music they play. As appreciable and sentimental as the songs are, they aren’t captivating or resonant enough to make an impact to get you grooving, moving and shaking on a dancefloor.
Conclusion
Despite all the slating going on in this review, Goodbye Volcano High is likely to appeal to those who want an uncomplicated and down-to-earth narrative experience. There are glimpses of goodness within Goodbye Volcano High’s grounds, but the bland writing, cliched characters and needlessly protracted scenes don’t do it any favours. The rhythm action sections are swell additions that break up the long-winded cutscenes, but they too are overstuffed with timed button press prompts, as they end up feeling too hectic for their own good. Goodbye Volcano High overstays its welcome in spite of its 5-hour length, lumbering along without any significant drama until the climax approaches, so it’s questionable whether you’d stay the course or find something more dramatic to satiate your appetite for good videogame yarns. If this is indeed goodbye to Volcano High, then its demise will shed only a shrug of disappointment.
Final Verdict: 2.5/5
Available on: PS5 (reviewed), PS4, PC; Publisher: KO_OP; Developer: KO_OP; Players: 1; Released: September 29th, 2023; PEGI 12 ; MSRP: $29.99
Full disclosure: This review is based on a copy of Goodbye Volcano High provided by the publisher.
