Grapple Dog: Cosmic Canines is a sequel to the first Grapple Dog game. The events of the last game saw Pablo saving the world of Partash and during the final battle, a portal opened up and robed figures warned of grave danger. Pablo has a dream about a cosmic gateway, finds the gateway, travels through it and into The Beyond. The Beyond is a dimension above all others and Pablo finds himself coming face to face with the evil entity VYR. VYR has invaded The Beyond, shattered the Allkrystal which was once maintaining the balance of the cosmos.
Now Pablo and his new ally Luna, a fellow grapple dog must work together to piece the Allkrystal back together, restore balance to the cosmos and rid The Beyond of VYR. The story of Grapple Dog Cosmic Canines is told very well. It’s told by means of dialogue between characters, and really nicely animated cutscenes that seem almost taken from a Saturday morning cartoon. Most often than not, sequels aren’t as good as the original game. Well with Cosmic Canines, this game I found had a better story that really kept me engaged the entire way through.
Grapple Dog: Cosmic Canines is an action platformer and collectathon game. You can play as either Pablo or Luna. You play as either character depending on the stage. Each stage has berries to collect, enemies to dispatch, hidden areas to find, three collectible shards, and a treasure.
The game has a heavy focus on platforming and is very fast. You run along platforms, grapple and swing your way around the stage at a rather lightning fast pace. Each stage feels very large, but it’s really not. What I mean by that is, each stage has several paths which encourage exploration to find all of the hidden items and secrets. Though this is a nice way to expand each level, you don’t really need to do this. You could just traverse the level and head straight for the end of each stage.
Grapple Dog Cosmic Canines offers you the options of trying to locate every item, collect every berry, or just head for the exit of each stage. One really fun aspect to the game is that it offers you the choice of trying to speed run each stage, which I honestly feel the game was built around. I mean not necessarily the defining mechanic, but it’s nice that you have options.
Pablo has all of his previous moves from the first game with the addition of an electric ability that allows you to traverse specific panels and activate certain cannons. This also allows you to do an electric type spin jump attack to dispatch enemies. Though it doesn’t add anything to the actual jump and spin attack, it still looks cool.
Luna is a character that I feel brings too much to the table and changes the overall flow to the game. So this new character has all of Pablo’s moves plus the ability to rapidly shoot at objects and enemies. What Luna introduces to the game feels like it goes from an action platformer to a run and gun shooter. I am a huge fan of run and gun shooters, but having this genre in the game feels out of place. It feels like it was kind of shoe horned in. Like the developer felt the only way to make the game feel different was to add this new character that totally changed the entire genre of the game.
I appreciate what was trying to be done here, but I feel like by adding the run and gun shooter aspect of the game, that it completely slows down the game’s fast paced nature. You’re no longer running, dashing, and grappling your way around the stage as fast as you can. Now you’re doing that and having to slow down a bit to take out certain objects and enemies with your gun.
While the innovative idea is a nice departure from the familiar gameplay of Grapple Dog, I feel like the stages you play as Luna should have been entirely different. They should have focused solely on being run and gun shooter stages and left the grappling around and speed aspects behind.
Graphically Grapple Dog Cosmic Canines looks really good. It’s a side-scrolling action platformer that has beautiful bright colors to every stage. Each stage has a lot of detail with NPC bystanders kind of doing their own thing, nice environmental backgrounds, and everything having a nice almost cell shaded look. The graphics are a mix of cell shading and a cartoon look. This mixture of graphic elements make the game feel very unique and stands out among other action platformers out there.
I mentioned before that the game was fast and I meant it. At times you can just be flying around the stage so fast that you can complete a stage in less than a couple of minutes if you’ve had enough practice. With the game being an action platformer and with as fast as the game moves, it felt like I was playing a cross between Wario Land and Sonic the Hedgehog. If this is what their baby would be like, I am totally alright with that.
You would think that playing this game on the Switch and it being as fast as it is, there would be some performance issues. Well to my surprise, this game runs at a solid 30FPS. Though it runs at a solid 30FPS, the game feels like it’s running at 60FPS. While I can’t confirm this to be the case, I am very happy that there is no dip in performance to where there is any noticeable slowdown of any kind.
Music in Grapple Dog Cosmic Canines is nothing short of amazing. Each stage has it’s own track that is up beat and really fun to listen to. Even the world map area has some great music to it. Boss music is what one would expect with a game like this. It’s hard hitting and almost heavy metal sounding.
While the music tracks are awesome, there are other sounds that I have issues with. During the story elements of the game, Pablo and his friends sound like they’ve been lifted from The Sims or plucked right from Animal Crossing. I appreciate that these are animals and when they talk they make animal type sounds. But I would have much rather had the characters be anthropomorphic animals instead of having animal-like sounds or muffled dialog. The sound Pablo makes when he talks is like a dog bark but also sounds like a human mimicking a dog bark. It just sounds totally out of place and rather cheap.
Another aspect in the sound department that I have an issue with is the sound that your character makes when swinging on their grappling hook. It almost sounds like someone recorded themselves making a whoosh sound and made it sound computerized. I know that sounds weird, but you have to really listen to it to understand what I am describing.
Now I am not trying to say that the dialog and some sounds being made on the cheap is a horrible thing. I mean I get what the developer was going for. These sounds help make the game feel whimsical and something that I could see a kid sitting down and enjoying. I just would have liked it if the game had a bit more polish in the sound effects and dialog department.
Issues with sound effects and a shoe horned in genre being forced into the game aside, Grapple Dog Cosmic Canines is a fantastic game. It is a leap above the first game and is one of those games that I will continue to come back to for a long time to come. This game feels and plays like it’s on par with the likes of Super Mario Bros, Wario Land, and Sonic the Hedgehog. This game is easily an AA game and one that every fan of platformers needs to play on their platform of choice!
Disclaimer: A review key was provided
In addition to writing articles, Ryan Byers also creates content for his YouTube channel called "Obscure Games and Consoles", collects video games, and dabbles in video game development.