The Adventures of Cookie & Cream (PS2)

Developer FromSoftware is best known for their incredibly hard dark fantasy series Dark Souls, and if you look back at the games they made before it, its pretty easy to see them working their way towards such a series. However, there is one game in their pedigree that sticks out from the others, because this company that would go on to make grueling and grim games once made a game about two colorful bunnies called Cookie and Cream.

Known as Kuri Kuri Mix in Japan and Europe, The Adventures of Cookie & Cream tells the tale of two rabbits who are on the way to the Moon Festival when they encounter a chicken. The chicken informs them that the moon is gone and that they have been chosen to bring the moon back, the chicken putting a flower pot on the brown rabbit Cookie’s head and an umbrella on the pink rabbit Cream’s head to mark them as heroes. These crowns don’t actually do anything though, but Cookie and Cream still head off to return the moon to the night sky, the chicken and a black counterpart to it following along on the adventure to teach them how the game is played as well as giving tips on how to solve puzzles they encounter.

The Adventures of Cookie & Cream remains a cartoony game throughout, but most of the silliness only appears at the beginning and when you start nearing the end, although the final secret world you unlock for beating the game does have level designs where they throw in any wacky ideas they had for platforming puzzles. The regular worlds aren’t too strange but still serve their roles well, adventures through the jungle, across ice floes, and through deserts serving their role, but its when you head to areas like Music World, Trick World, or Magical World where things get more imaginative. Areas where you walk across and need to activate giant instruments, a carnival with rides you need to manipulate, and even a giant controllable robot for the rabbits to ride in spice things up between more regular stages, and this variety is important because The Adventures of Cookie & Cream plays in a rather interesting way that is both its main appeal and the source of some of its woes, as during this adventure, both rabbits must be working in tandem to succeed.

If you choose to go the game alone, you’ll be controlling Cookie and Cream at the same time, one half of the controller devoted to moving Cookie around and the other moving Cream. The left stick and two shoulder buttons are Cookie’s controls and the right stick and shoulder buttons control Cream, so the game needs to fit quite a few commands to two buttons each for the bunnies. One button is devoted to jumping, and since this is a top down platformer, that can lead to a little awkwardness as seeing how they’ll land isn’t always perfect when their body blocks the view a little, but both pack a double jump to allow for some adjustment. The second button is your action button, the context of this changing depending on what the rabbit is near at the moment. They can use this activate switches, grab things they need to pull, and a few other variable functions, but it can be a little finicky at times, requiring you to stand in the perfect spot to have the action available to you. Eventually it will be pretty easy to figure out how to compensate for these small issues, and over time, a single player can learn to control both bunnies pretty well, although if they want make things easier, having a second player along so each person controls one bunny definitely makes the puzzle solving more manageable and helps with some of the other issues this control concept has.

Almost every level in the game involves Cookie and Cream needing to head forward through one long level, both bunnies having half the screen to themselves and rarely able to push into each other’s areas. Much of the puzzle solving in the game involves one rabbit needing to perform an action to manipulate the other’s area, things like pulling aside hazards to let a rabbit safely pass, activating platforms so a rabbit can cross gaps, or one rabbit activating an object to move the other around. This can take on some interesting forms like needing to have Cookie play a trumpet properly to adjust the platforms for Cream or the bunnies needing to alternate the rise and fall of platforms so they can both get across water or bottomless pits before their platforms fall down, with some later puzzles requiring not only expert movement, but a keen mind to figure out just how to navigate the area or interact with nearby objects to proceed. The problem with this though is every level in The Adventures of Cookie & Cream is timed, meaning that if you spend too much time on anything, you’ll lose the stage, it sometimes being hopeless to continue even when the level scatters around time extension pick-ups to collect. The need to be quick does make things more challenging, a few late game levels really stretching how much can be done within such a timeframe, but other times it just means you’ll have to play a stage a few times so you have everything practiced for a run that will fit within the time limit.

The time limit is, interestingly enough, your health of sorts in The Adventures of Cookie & Cream. If one of the rabbits falls down a pit, is hit by an enemy, or otherwise takes some damage, they are able to get up and go after, but there is a time penalty incurred for the failure. Recovering from failure isn’t impossible, especially if you scrounge around for time extensions, but it does add to the difficulty in the game’s more challenging stages and makes certain puzzles where you need to jump with incredible precision more intense. Many enemies can be handled with a few jumps on the head and the game isn’t too ridiculous with their placement, it being pretty easy to even handle foes on both sides of the screen simultaneously due to simple enemy design. There is one enemy that is incredibly annoying though and almost antithetical to the game design at times though, and that is the time stealer. In most stages, if one rabbit stands in place for a little too long, a flying creature will come in and latch onto that rabbit, draining time away as a punishment for not moving. The problem with this enemy concept though is sometimes there really isn’t a reason for a rabbit to be moving. One bunny may be working towards solving the puzzle to open up the way for the other who has nothing to do while they wait, but it gets even more egregious when you’re sitting in a minecart or on something the other rabbit needs to move around, the bunny riding along not really having anything meaningful to do while hitching this ride. To stave off the time stealer they just have to move around in place slightly, something that’s not too hard to do but feels like a pointless feature and one that doesn’t really add anything while discouraging a behavior that doesn’t really need to be discouraged.

The time stealer undermines a few interesting puzzles, but when you do get down just lightly moving a rabbit when it has nothing to do, many of the puzzles in the game make the cooperation between the two rabbits an interesting mechanic, the pace of play and how you approach the level ahead constantly changing around. Cookie and Cream will both have to take the reins as the one in more control of the situation, but the place they are perhaps most different in their roles is during boss battles. Boss battles take place in special arenas where sometimes the bunnies are no longer locked to their sides of the screen, but they do tend to get different roles during the fight. The golem boss has one character down on the battlefield luring the boss around while one is on a wall waiting to activate the means to damage it, the Water World boss has Cookie driving a boat around while Cream tosses bombs at a giant fish, and the Desert World boss is a bit of a free for all where whoever can get a hold of the hammer deals the damage. There are some bosses where the play is similar to regular levels like the ice world boss where he stands in the middle and the two rabbits stay on their sides and basically play air hockey to try and hit him, so much like the levels, the difficulty will vary depending on the demands placed on both bunnies and how precise they’ll have to be with their coordination. Unfortunately, many battles can drag due to slow boss cycles, weird boss movements, or the need for tight precision in bunny cooperation, with the ones who don’t have these issues sometimes being too simple to enjoy instead.

The last major part of play in The Adventures of Cookie & Cream is a subpar multiplayer versus mode. By collecting puzzle pieces in the main game you can unlock new characters to compete to earn points in vertically scrolling levels. These battles offer power-ups to knock points out of the other character, and while it is a sort of race to the finish, the controlled pace means things can feel excruciatingly slow as you’re left with few points to collect and only each other to mess with as you wait for the screen to pick up the pace. Cooperative play of the story mode is definitely the better multiplayer focus here, and some challenges that are simple alone like one bunny each having a paddle for a boat become more interesting when the coordination is split across two people instead of one person who can easily manage it. The time crunch can make certain challenges less enjoyable though because of the need for excellent cooperation, but a pair of in sync partners can push through even the toughest moments, sometimes having an advantage when both bunnies need to be both quick and precise at the same time.

THE VERDICT: As one might expect from such an approach to gameplay, The Adventures of Cookie & Cream’s unique design of having both bunnies under control at once has its ups and downs. Puzzles that require thought and cooperation can make for interesting challenges, but some lean on the slightly awkward platforming a little too hard or arbitrarily require a rabbit to move around when it has nothing to do to avoid time penalties. The level and boss designs do ensure that overcoming obstacles and figuring out how to move the two along is satisfying, but the timer does force some repetition into the affair. With a partner or on your own, the heavy focus on teamwork between the bunnies can lead to smooth exhilarating play when it works or aggravating troubles when it doesn’t, so this sweet and sour mix ends up teetering too often between the two to really stand out as either good or bad.

And so, I give The Adventures of Cookie & Cream for PlayStation 2…

An OKAY rating. Like many games focused on cooperation, the quality of the title can swing based on who you play with, but here it can also come from how well you can manage the two rabbits on your own. The entire game is based around their coordination, but this is where it ends up straddling the line between satisfying and annoying. The time penalties eases up the pressure for getting hurt, and with the precision jumps needed at times, this is a decent way to avoid failures being too punishing, but at the same time many stages will punish time loss too harshly, and repeating stages with two people requires a bit more patience than with a single player guiding all the action. The time stealer is just another way that the game sometimes pushes its limitations a bit too far, but the puzzles and battles that make up the core gameplay nearly make up for it. The action keeps players moving and working together on the fly, there being an enjoyable rhythm to when things really start to click in controlling both bunnies. Puzzles come in many different forms too, so learning how they work and pulling them off also ensures that the play is interesting throughout, it just doesn’t necessarily survive repeat encounters when the timer or slightly awkward controls mean you have to do them again.

An interesting deviation from their normal fare, FromSoftware’s The Adventures of Cookie & Cream mostly stumbles due to the importance of the level time limits. A more traditional health system would allow the players to focus on the fun puzzles and working together in fights instead of making sure to shuffle in place often enough to avoid trouble, but the timer isn’t so oppressive that it completely smothers the moments of jolly cooperation.