I was too young to fully appreciate Chicken Run back when it was first released. At the age of eight, I wasn’t able to enjoy the effort put into its art style, as well as its homage to classic stealth movies and its dry, witty British humor. Just like most of Aardman’s works, I’d only start caring more about it years later, after being exposed to way too much British comedy. I even had a good time watching its sequel, Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget, released on Netflix a few years ago. With Chicken Run: Eggstraction, Aardman‘s poultry-heavy franchise makes a return to videogames after 25 years, once again taking advantage of its premise to come up with an actually decent gameplay loop that is a perfect fit for it: stealth.

You’d hope they wait for your command, but they’ll automatically run to the extraction point, whether the path is safe or not.

First things first, be aware that you will need to have watched Dawn of the Nugget in order to understand Eggstraction‘s plot, as it’s, believe it or not, a canonical sequel. In a way, you should consider it to be Chicken Run 3. Aardman put a lot of effort in its writing and canonical continuity, having one of the previous movie’s writers come up with Eggstraction‘s plot, as well as bringing back Bella Ramsey as the protagonist Molly, the daughter of the first movie’s protagonists. Josie Sedgwick-Davies also returns as Frizzle, the chicken with an insanely heavy Liverpool accent, easily my favorite character in the entire game.

As for the game aspect of Chicken Run: Eggstraction, this is a stealth game with extraction elements, as well as some arcadey vibes. It’s arcadey in the sense that each mission is short and replayable. The objective in most missions is simple: you need to look for a bunch of captured chickens at the end of a level, and extract them back to the beginning of the area, ensuring that the way back, which they will walk towards automatically, is devoid of traps, issues or enemies. You need to clear the way from robotic dogs (they’re here for some reason), laser gates, security cameras, and, in the case you get caught by any of them, fix the situation as quickly as possible to ensure you finish the level with the highest amount of recovered chickens as possible.

All cutscenes feature the Aardman stop-motion art style we all know and love.

It’s a straightforward gameplay loop, and despite its utter control simplicity, you have quite a range of customization options, ranging from picking your chicken “leader” of choice (each with their own special abilities) to the loadouts you’re taking with you. In fact, what hinders the gameplay, as well as the game’s overall presentation, is the top-down perspective, which makes some rooms, traps and elements too small and difficult to pay attention to. Which is also a shame for a game actually developed by Aardman, since you can’t even notice the stop-motion art style during gameplay. Thankfully, you can (and will) notice them during some absolutely fantastic cutscenes, which are basically brand new Chicken Run footage for you to enjoy.

The problem with Eggstraction is that whilst the cutscenes are amazing, the game itself is far from a looker. Blame the camera angle.

As a game itself, Chicken Run: Eggstraction is fine, completely competent, even if it’s not the most fantastic stealth title in the world. But when you combine its simple but effective gameplay loop (which can also be enjoyed with a friend in local co-op) with some jaw-dropping cutscenes, excellent voice acting, and some lovely British dry wit, you get a game that will rarely make you feel bored. Developed by Aardman themselves, you can notice this wasn’t a rushed job or a cash grab; it might be far from perfect, but it’s certainly a little title that made me style more often than not.

Chicken Run: Eggstraction is available now on PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series S/X, PC and Switch.

Reviewed on Switch.

A copy of Chicken Run: Eggstraction was provided by the publisher.