Just Platinumed Bugsnax and I have some thoughts (Spoilers)

Hey duders, got my PS5 on launch and told myself I wouldn't buy any games until I hit 100% with Astro's PlayRoom and Bugsnax. Now that I've done so with both I can reflect a bit on how crazy Bugsnax is.

The concept as a whole I found pretty fun, the bugsnax are adorable and their sounds/names are so catchy I randomly find myself saying stuff like "Bunger Bunger Bunger" or "Mooooothza" when walking around the house. Some were more tedious to find (I'm looking at you "can-only-catch-in-the-rain Bugsnax) but ultimately they can all be gotten fairly easily.

Now with the spoilers and the ending of the game.

WTF was that?! Bugsnax being parasites was a great idea, how it's a virus and it's eating the Grumpus from the inside. How we have to escape the island and make sure no one dies was exciting but man did it feel weird smashing and killing Bugsnax I've come to call as cute while playing the game. Found the modifications to existing gathering tools to become killing machines amazing and I laughed as I went through that last level. Add to that the post-credit scene of finding out there's a Bugsnax conspiracy and GNN (the game's CNN) knowing about the Bugsnax and that last strawberry escaping in the boat makes me kinda excited to see where the franchise goes.

All in all, glad those two games were free for PS5 and would have probably paid like 25$ for Bugsnax if it wasn't free but definitely should not be priced higher than $40.00.

Finished it right before bed on a work night because of my enormous, wrinkly brain.

I have many Thoughts and also Feelings about the final stretch, but the stuff that most sticks in my craw is the post-interview quest lines for everybody (which I mostly did in a big bunch when most Grumpuses were back in Snaxburg). Not the quests themselves--they're fetch quests, you know, videogames--but where they go narratively, which is to say that most of them go dark dark dark. Wambus and Floofty (!) are the only ones that find some worthwhile, productive, healthy places to be, mostly from their own efforts. (Triffany seems pretty alright throughout, doing the fulfilling work she clearly wants to be doing.) Everybody else, though, even my beloved Himbo King Chandlo, just burrows deeper and deeper into their insecurities and eventually just gives up on it.

I didn't finish all of them. When I got to Beffica's final quest, I fed her two Green Lollives, an Inchwrap, and a Pinkle, and the game read only one of those as "green." Don't know if bug or what*, but I'd already about had it with cop-ass-Beffica-who-needs-to-mind-her-own-business, and decided I wasn't doing this anymore. I'd started to feel for her as she went through the poisonous environment she was running from in the first place (she kind of already had a parasite before she arrived on the island), but joining her in her toxic games wasn't helping her feel better or get to any healthier a place. Because why would it? Nor was (for the most part) feeding the dependencies and hungers of the other Snaxburgers. Because why would it?

At first this whole sequence of quests left a sour taste in my mouth, which was why I left the last few behind and just beelined for the end. It felt like trying to make a depressed person "happy" by just doing whatever it is they tell me they want, and since they're videogame fetch quests, that's the only option I have for showing them any kind of support. It sucks here as much as it does in real life, and ends in the same frustration and tears for all involved. But the more I thought about it, the more sense that makes in the context of where the story goes ultimately, that feeding the beast is never going to fix anything. Floofty (of all the dangerous psychos) comes to their enlightenment through connecting with Snorpy and understanding something outside of themselves, and Wambus gets there by coming to grips with loss in a meaningful way, and neither were the direct result of my actions. The rest just sink deeper after finding that having their immediate wants met wasn't accomplishing anything real. The videogame-ass trope of "Get Thing/Kill Guy to fix me" was never going to fly here any more than it does anywhere else.

I lost Beffica and Snorpy in the big action set-piece at the end (which I thought was fine and an interesting inversion of the core gameplay stuff, though tonally a little abrupt) and Beffica's death speech was easily the darkest shit in the whole game, shockingly so. And Snorpy's death made Chandlo sad, which made *me* sad because I want Chandlo to be happy.

EDIT: Also am still a little sketchy with how the ending set-piece handles its stakes. I don't know if the player can perfect that sequence so no one takes a hit, but it seems clear that no matter how poorly I was doing I was never taking damage. The other Grumpuses were paying for it, and I'm still not sure how I feel about that.

Gave me a lot more to chew on ( :) ) than I expected I'll say that much.

* Probably I was supposed to make her green and making her arms into Lollives turned them pimento red and fuck this come on

Oh my god that turn sounds fantastic!

I didn't find the ending to be as surprising or wild as much as other people did. I thought it was in line with everything else the game did up until that point. They were was clearly something going on with all these Grumpuses needing Bugsnax so bad.

I did poorly enough during the ending set piece that one of the grumpuses actually died which was unexpected. I had to beat it again with everyone surviving to get the platinum

@dirty_duck: Yeah I guess you can perfect that sequence (never figured out how to view the cheevs in the EGS version). It was obvious that I was doing very poorly but my excuse is I was just trying to plow through it and it was late on a work night, yeah that's it

My guy Snorpy just got blown the fuck up and it rattled me to my core.

Wait what the hell?

At the end of my game everyone lived, how do you trigger certain members of the group to die?

@meestero: I did not understand how the trip wire minigame worked and the snax got to them

I just finished it. Didn't catch all of the bugsnax but I finished all the sidequests.

It was ...fine? My main issue is that the tools are kind of cumbersome to use at times. Especially that tripwire, and the latter half of the game seems to rely on it super hard. That cake boss fight was just frustrating, I felt like I had to just spam it and hope I didn't set myself on fire/get hit with ice balls.

I liked the twist, it wasn't unexpected per se but it was a good way to tie up the body horror-esque themes. All of my people survived, so I'm interested in seeing what a bad ending looks like (especially one where they all die, if that's possible).

I was honestly surprised just how much I started to care about the grumps I had bad initial impressions of. I mean they're still kinda whack and I was put off by the fact you can't tell Filbo to go it alone when he runs for mayor (feels like this game was initially intended to come out earlier with that bit), but I still was worried that I was going to lose one at the end there (mainly Floofty, since they were the only one I completely transformed (I doubt that's how that works but it's what I guessed from first seeing the chupacabra snax like an hour into playing)).

Well that was a ride. The abrupt shift into Lovecraftian horror at the end was not particularly surprising, especially after doing Triffany and Floofty's side quests, but the amount of genuine darkness and pathos they crammed into a game about Muppets eating anthropomorphic snacks was flabbergasting. Definitely the best writing in any game I've played this year and the first time in a long time I've felt compelled to binge a game just to see where the story goes. Hades is very good too, but some of the lines from Bugsnax have burned themselves into my brain in a way Hades' writing hasn't managed...Triffany saying "Well, they say time heals all wounds, but it also just feels like time's pushing me closer and closer to the grave" in her chipper Marge Gunderson accent was downright haunting.

I had all the Grumpuses survive and I was pretty sloppy throughout the end sequence...I did every side quest, so I wonder if that has some bearing on how much you can screw up before someone dies?

Also I loved the Metal Gear Solid-style after credits phone call, though I hope they never actually make a sequel. Please let this just be a weird standalone thing.

Favorite Snax: Bunger, Charmallow

Favorite Grumpus: Triffany

Least Favorite Snak: Fuckin goddam asshole Scorpeno

Least Favorite Grumpus: Floofty

I ended up doing some research about how the ending works, and this is what I've found:

If you complete a character's sidequests, they won't die. If a bugsnak gets to them in the end sequence, they'll bat them away. If you DON'T finish their sidequests, the bugsnax will instead jump into their mouth, transforming a part. At the end of their sequence, if a grumpus is fully transformed, they'll fall apart and die. If a grumpus is fully transformed already, and you haven't completed their sidequests, I'm not sure if they automatically die or not.

It was a crazy ride. I really didn't expect that this game's overarching narrtive and character stories would catch my attention as much as they did.

Why do I not see more of a discussion around how Bugsnax are partly a metaphor for drug and processed food addiction? Food disguised with shiny wraps and pressed into appealing shapes, masking its true origin from the consumer. The rose-tinted glasses attitude of everyone, you are what you eat and all that. Sometimes I felt like a drug dealer ignoring the consequences of my actions, because my progress and my benefits! Preaching moral lessons around food and drugs may not the game's primary focus (or maybe it is?) but that aspect is definitely there; a little too on the nose even. No one on any podcast I listen to goes into this.

The welcome LGBT stuff is not really talked about either.

Really enjoyed the game overall, the last few sidequests dragged a lot because they didn't line up well for me and I ended up going to the mountain top four times over with a trip back to Snaxburg in between each and I was super ready to wrap things up. Felt like a huge idiot when I did Snorpy's side quests last and found out about tripwires carrying fire/ice, would have made catching those big popsicles and banana splits a lot easier without them....splitting.

The twist was not that surprising, but it is the twist I wanted. They could have gone with a veganism "eating animals is wrong!" message and I'm glad they didn't.

One thing that did kinda stick out for me in the ending was the graphics. There was a lot of grousing from certain people about this game's graphics, including that old chestnut "looks like a PS2 game". While I think the graphics were pretty good throughout the majority of the game, those piles of food and the Undersnax in general DID look like PS2-era graphics. Putting a busy texture over low-poly objects is never not distracting.

I don't think I ever used the elemental wires outside Snorpy's questline. Seemed like too much of a hassle to even bother with. Also Snorpy said they could carry water as well as ice, but I don't think they actually do