One of the music tracks in the game is a totally re-recorded version of Right Said Fred’s “I’m Too Sexy”. Mostly dreadful re-hashes of well-known pop songs with Crazy Frog samples thrown in for good measure. The only notable moment of levity being the course that sees you travelling between two cities – one medieval, one futuristic. Don’t.īut, hey – let’s talk aesthetics! On the whole, the game doesn’t look astonishingly bad. Two people clumsily flying around a tiny, cramped arena, trying desperately to shoot each other until one of them gives up and just flies down the nearest pitfall enough times to make the game end.Īnd don’t even get me started on the mini-games. Games are meant to engage their players, not have them staring slack-jawed at the TV while their brains occasionally chip in with “Christ, I have to do another lap?”. The result of each race seems to be decided within the first thirty seconds or so – after that, the racers become separated, and you spend the next few minutes just going through the motions, effectively doing the course on your own despite knowing the inevitable outcome. Almost every race sees you either sitting in last place, completely unable to attack any of your opponents due to the short range of the weapons you’re given, or you’re constantly in the lead, picking up a load of items that are basically useless because your opponents are too far behind to attack you anyway. You can tell they’ve gone for a similar system – performing badly gets you good weapons, and vice-versa. Crazy Frog Racer 2 takes this idea and messes it up completely. It’s designed so that all the players stay close together, leading to much more interesting races. It gets more complicated when you bare in mind that skilled use of the banana skin allows a player to block incoming attacks, but you get the idea. It acts as an automatically-adjusting handicap, so that inexperienced players can hold their own against veterans. If you want to impress your friends, you can point out that this is called a negative feedback system. Staying in first place for any length of time, on the other hand, will get you much less impressive toys to play with (a banana skin, for example). In Mario Kart, you pick up items on the track, and are given ‘better’ items (say, a lightning bolt that shrinks all your opponents) if you appear to be losing. Still, I’d better back it up with a few examples. If there was any justice in the world, that’d be the press quote on the box. That’s right – you’re thinking of Crazy Frog Racer 2. Now, imagine a racing game starring a cast of entirely charmless characters that takes all the good ideas from Mario Kart, misunderstands them entirely, then tries to re-create them. It’s a solid racing game with an incredibly well-balanced weapons system (so well-balanced, in fact, that it merits a battle mode that’s set apart from the regular races). Everyone and their mother has played Mario Kart, and there’s a good reason for that – it’s fantastic in just about all of its incarnations. Still, is the game any good? D’you want the long answer, or the short one? Considering the target audience, they might as well have gone all the way and just written the whole thing in txt spk instead. Who the hell was paid to proof-read this crap? I’ll tell you: no-one bloody was. You can use it for example when your about to win”. And don’t forget that “The Shied will protect you for a short while. A couple of pages on, you’re told that you can “try to beat your records in the time trails”. Yes, apparently the booklet’s aim of instructing the player is secondary to the objective of selling you the latest Crazy Frog album. Right after the obligatory health warnings and stuff on the inside front cover, you’re presented with “ALSO AVAILABLE: CRAZY FROG ‘MORE CRAZY HITS’ – THE ALBUM (CD + BONUS DVD)”. Point is, I want it to be made clear that I approached Crazy Frog Racer 2 with an open mind, despite the general awfulness that apparently surrounds its main character, and the fact that it’s basically aimed at kids.Ī quick look through the instruction booklet set a few alarm bells ringing, though. Well, not so much ‘missed out on’, as ‘successfully avoided’ – largely because you have to be an arsehole to actually watch MTV for long enough that you’ll see a Jamster advert (mind you, last time I checked, that only took about twenty seconds). Y’know, I actually missed out on the whole Crazy Frog thing.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |