While I love all-ages animation (as well as stuff that’s geared towards older audiences), Paw Patrol is one of my guilty pleasures. Sure, I buy the DVDs and merchandise for family friends and godchildren, but part of me also likes watching how the titular group save the day with family-friendly hijinks and some surprisingly good writing.

I did play the first Paw Patrol console game that was released back in 2018, and to put it bluntly, it was a snoozefest. However, a lot of kids at church loved the game, and I recommended it to parents who were looking for an inoffensive platformer to play with their children. Going into Paw Patrol: Mighty Pups Save Adventure Bay, I can say that this is an improved installment that has a great co-op component this time around, even if there are some glaring technical issues here and there.

Paw Patrol: Mighty Pups Save Adventure Bay follows the eight main pups (Chase, Marshall, Rubble, Skye, Rocky, Zuma, Everest, and Tracker) as they encounter a mysterious meteor in Adventure Bay. After extracting it from the ground, they are all hit with it and gain powers based on their personality: Chase, the loveable police dog, gets super speed; boisterous bulldog Rubble gets super strength, and the like. Oddly enough, Tracker doesn’t get a superpower or a neat costume, which also follows the conventions of the television miniseries. With these new powers, players will assume control of two pups as they explore different environments to help the people and animals of Adventure Bay.

While the first game was a 2.5D platformer, this game is a 3D open-roaming one. In each of the seven included missions, players will explore the area finding pup treats, interacting with special objects that only one pup can access, and finding medals that will unlock pictures you can view in a gallery. It’s fundamentally the same as Paw Patrol: On a Roll, except the platforming is a tad more complex and the game is more fun than its predecessor.

Though the first title could be summed up as, “hold the analog stick and press jump sometimes”, this one feels more like a child’s first LEGO platformer game, with an emphasis on the drop-in, drop-out co-op feature. You can play this game in single-player mode, but at any time you can tag someone in with a second controller and play with two people. This makes the game exponentially better than the first if you’re playing with a young child, as the previous game was single-player only. Instead of one person hogging one controller, you can now play with someone else, which makes for a good communication experience.

To highlight the Mighty Pups abilities, there are some quick time events and longer interactions that will require players to follow the on-screen prompts in order to advance. For example, you can use Zuma’s water abilities to cool down lava or Rocky to summon giant tools to fix a broken structure. These segments are nice challenges that will break up the platforming. In addition, there are seven minigames you can unlock by collecting enough pup treats. Three of them are the same single-player segments you can encounter within the main missions (though you’ll earn pup treats for completing these solo versions), but four of them are two-player games that are replayable, with a handful of them getting difficult versions should you complete them. I personally liked the obstacle course minigame since it emphasizes precise platforming.

That said, this game is relatively more complicated, which means younger fans may have trouble with some of the controls. My four-year-old godchild had no problem with the first game but found it hard to grasp the 3D open-roam gameplay of this one. I would say this game would be fine for kids ages 5-8 by themselves, with adult supervision for anyone younger. Obviously, this challenge won’t be an issue for adults considering it’s pretty easy, but for the intended audience, I would say this is a suitable difficulty.

In terms of presentation and technical performance, it’s a mixed bag. The soundtrack is serviceable and comes with different tunes based on the main theme of the show (and if you’ve ever seen an episode of Paw Patrol, you know exactly what I’m talking about). While the main human boy Ryder is voiced, no one else is, which is a shame because this was a problem that could have been fixed from the last game. To balance this, however, each of the more than dozen languages supported have their respective Ryder voice actor narrate the game, which is a cool feature. (Also cool: even the UK English and US English options have a different Ryder voice actor!)

This voice acting issue extends to performance. The game doesn’t look too bad (especially in portable mode), but it doesn’t seem to run even at 30 FPS at times. It’s not a graphically demanding game, so I’m just wondering if the Switch version is just a poorly optimized one compared to the other consoles. Sometimes voice lines will cut off for no adequate reason, and other times they’ll play as intended.

The biggest issue I had with the game was the fact that it crashed a couple of times when I was playing the third mission in the game (i.e. the one where you have to find Chickaletta, the mayor’s chicken). Every time I paused the game here as the first player, it would crash to menu, regardless of if I was playing solo or multiplayer. This thankfully didn’t happen anywhere else, but I could see some frustration for adults with kids that like to pause a lot. While the game feels pared down compared to its predecessor (seven main missions compared to sixteen from On a Roll), most of these missions have multiple segments which make for longer playtimes overall. You can beat the game in around 2-3 hours, but keep in mind this is with me only playing the first few missions with a co-op partner. For the intended audience, I would imagine playtime being much longer, especially if players want to collect every pup treat they find.

As the game is based on one of the most popular children’s shows in recent memory, it follows the family-friendly tone of the series. As such, there aren't any moral objections that I encountered during my playthrough. While the people and animals you have to save are in peril, there is no “fail” state, which means children won’t be at risk of seeing any bad outcomes happening to the characters onscreen. While there is a battle during the last mission that utilizes all the mighty pups’ abilities to stop a rampaging robot, there is no violent aspects to this battle and everyone ends up unscathed.

Paw Patrol: Mighty Pups Save Adventure Bay is a great game for younger fans of the series, and with the addition of co-op, is a nice experience for parents who want to play a game with their children.