I could live anywhere inside the great big red circle, fopr all you know. |
A
bit of history: I am not originally an English speaker. I am very
much a Québécois, with the French language and all. Okay, not quite
French, but, well, our French dialect, with many differences with the
international French you might know. Either way, I am the best
English speaker in my house. If you called my mother and spoke to her
in English, she'd hang up immediately; and my father knows English
words, but only the names of the tools he works with. Ironically, he
doesn't know the French names to those tools. He doesn't use a
“cliquet”; he uses a ratchet, and the word "ratchet" appears in the middle of his French sentences like it has always belongd there.
I
was also trying to introduce my parents to gaming. I tried, every once in a
while; my mother loves to play bowling on Wii Sports Resort, and my
father likes fishing games. I was looking for a party game that
wasn't too expensive, one I could buy on the WiiWare, and which I
could play with my parents and have fun with myself. Because
what's the point of video games if you're not having fun? ...Anyway,
this quest led me to buy a game called Pop-Up Pursuit.
I
regret that purchase. You'll see why here and now.
What the game basically looks like. You'll see a LOT of dialog boxes. The even ask you to confirm every one of your choices. |
But
I'm getting ahead of myself. Pop-Up Pursuit is a “party game”
very loosely based on the concept of snakes and ladders, card games,
and a few more. The result is... messy, to say the least. The point of
the game is to reach the final space on the board; but instead of dice, you
use cards to make your move. At the start of each turn, you can
choose between picking up a card, or adding a coin to your total
amount of coins. There are cards to move your character around, sure,
but there are also special cards: Some will add coins to your total,
some will force other players to move backwards, some will destroy
cards right off your opponents' hands (geez, gotta be thankful you
can see every other player's hand!) or coins off their total... There are many diferent types of cards and effects. You can
have a maximum of five cards in the hand at any moment, and you can
play as many as you want each turn; but you can only play 1 “move
forward” card every turn. Even the “move forward” cards come in
different versions: There's the usual “Move X spaces” stuff, but
there is also “Move according to your position” (if you're in
fourth place, move 4 squares ahead; if you're in first place, move
one square ahead, etc.), and “Move X spaces plus an amount of
coins” (thanks to which you'll move the said amount of spaces plus more; but you need to pay one coin for every additional
space you'll move to). Coins can also be used to purchase additional
cards.
Complicated
yet? You haven't seen a thing.
That's not even the complete board. |
Very
few boards are available; only two, in fact. When you
start playing, you select the number of human players, from one to
four. By the way, there will always be four characters playing on a board, so if you play alone, you must also select three computer opponents. Then, you pick either “Single Play”
(battle royale) or “Team Play” (you play in two teams of two, and
both members of your team have to reach the end before the opposing
two players do). Next you pick a profile, and then your character.
And
what a funny lot of choice around Halloween! The six characters you
can pick from are all defined by a trait, and are dressed like that
trait, which means they all kinda look like Halloween costumes. Also,
since the game happens inside a book, all the characters are flat
like paper. We've got:
-Inventor,
who has a wrench in his pocket and a pair of goggles on his head
(though I'd be willing this whole site that the goggles are utterly
pointless);
-Explorer,
with a big exploration hat and a beard; he looks like a Sahara
explorer, or maybe Dr. Jones Sr. Either way, it's kind of an odd
look;
-Ninja,
who looks more like a red-eyed green-bandaged mummy than anything
else. “Nice mummy costume there! It really looks evil!” “I'M A
NINJA!” Yeah, another character who failed his costume;
-Debutante,
a girl with purple hair wearing a tuque. I guess she's the girly of
the bunch, but is it even worth having one when there are no actual
personalities around here?;
-Spy,
a tomboy-ish girl who hides her right eye behind bangs. It would be
cool if she was an actual goth, with the bang actually hiding a
robotic eye, and- Wait a second, this makes no sense. She should be
dressed as a freaking spy, not like a tomboy girl from high school!;
-And
finally, Pirate, who looks, um, like... a pirate? I'd rather say a
runaway Jamaican who forgot the Rastafarian colors were yellow,
black, red and green...
Left to right: Pirate, Debutante, Inventor and Spy. |
But
that's not all! You then pick your opponents. No, it doesn't change a
thing; you must pick among the remaining five characters. Oh, and the one you pcked can be picked again. Gee, so
much choice! How wonderful! Six! Compared to Pop-Up Pursuit, Brawl is
really lackluster in its character selection! (Notice the cringing, teeth-clenched, angry sarcasm.) For the Hell of it, why
don't I just list the same six damn characters here with their
“names” and “traits”?
-Inventor:
Junior, Courageous (Hey, that sounds like three-fourths of all
cartoon heroes!)
-Explorer:
Doc (no, that's really his name), Easygoing (Guess I was right to
compare him to Dr. Jones Sr....)
-Ninja:
Ninzo (What the Hell kind of name is THAT?), Mysterious (Or just
hides a gigantic pimple under all his bandages; we can't tell)
-Debutante:
Penny, Timid (With a name like that, I bet her strategy is to rack up
coins early on to pull lots of cruel pranks at the end)
-Spy:
Agent 37 (I'd prefer “Opal”, but I guess the developers just
didn't know what to call her), Devious (Can't be as bad as the stuff
you can find on DeviantArt...)
-Pirate:
Sharpe, Cutthroat (Oh, I get it. Har har har... Cue the canned
laughter to accompany my very fake chuckle.)
Now,
if these traits changed any goddamn thing to the gameplay, I wouldn't
mind... But it doesn't change much! So, after all that, you can finally pick a
board (You have Pitfall Island, and then Everdusk Temple, which is a
little longer, with 36 spaces). You have three difficulty settings:
Smooth Sailing, Fair To Middling, or Tread Carefully. The only difference is the number of different cards that you can draw. Then the game
finally starts. Mario Party was never as complicated as that...
My
frustration is unpronounceable. And it probably cannot be written
either. I think, for the sake of politeness, I will try not to be too vile in my comments.
The spaces are revealed as one of the characters runs past them. It's impossible to plan a startegy since you will not know ahead of time what the game has in store for you. |
Everything
– I repeat, EVERYTHING – in this game is randomized. The cards
you draw are picked obviously at random; but the spaces on
the board are randomized as well. You see, there is a multitude of different
spaces with effects and abilities that can give you extra help (coins
or cards), boost you forward, or hinder your progress. Also, every
square on the board is face-down when the game starts; in other
words, there is no way to know what are the spaces you're going to
see. Thankfully, the spaces the characters run by are also revealed,
so if you have a bad start and you're behind the others, you can at least tell what the next few
squares have in store for you.
Quick
mention: Among the spaces, there is the Altar of the Book of Magick.
Not a typo there, that's how it's called in the game. When a player
lands on that space, the large book in the background will rise and
its pages will flip; each set of pages has a different appearance
and, thus, effect. There's a giant black hand, a large black bull,
two smaller bulls, a large lion, an eagle, an angel... and maybe one
or two more. The effect differs depending on which page it stops
flipping. This will usually cause an effect to all players on the
board. It can give them money, make them move forwards or backwards,
it can make them earn or lose cards... One particularity of the Book
of Magick is that its effects will usually be more helpful to
“virtuous” players and harsher on “mischievous” players, the
ones who tend to use underhanded tactics more often. You can get a
reward and automatically lose it. Or you can see all of your
opponents being rewarded more than you, because your cards pretty much force you to be nasty if you've got a bad hand.
Don't let the light fool you. To unlucky players, this book is pure evil. And every player is unlucky in this game. |
What's my reaction when I lose this game? Take a wild guess. It starts with F, ends with U, has seven letters ad is split in two words. |
Which
brings me to my next point: The computer players in this board game
are greater cheaters than the computer players ever were on, say,
Mario Party. For starters, they always seem to know what is hidden
under the tiles, even though these were randomized before the game
started. Then, they seem to get just the right cards to counter your
attempts and they keep some of the better cards for themselves; they'll
often strip you clean of cards and coins, just because they can. Also,
they seem to know all the tricks one can play, and they make sure
they use any that would give them victory or, at least, prevent you
from getting it before them. They are particularly fond of racking up
coins and then using a “Move X spaces + Y amount of coins” near
the end of the game to move five, seven, ten, maybe more spaces at
once, guaranteed to reach the end quickly. Hop, 4 spaces by default, then set 7 coins: Voilà, you move eleven spaces! (This is the usual way
they beat me. For the sake of politeness, let's just say I am not
very happy when it happens.)
And of course, since they know everything about the board, they WILL use its tiles against you. To say that I am angry would be the understatement of the year. |
And
this brings me to the other problem: This time, the CPUs really are
ALL against you. Yeah, it happened in Mario Party as well, but it
wasn't so bad because you could just excel at the mini-games and keep
more money than they ever could steal from you. That gave you an edge that made you relatively protected and able to win, based on the mini-games alone. Here, you have no
such luck. All the things you got can be lost in a single turn. As
long as you're ahead, you WILL suffer from the collective wrath of
the Computers. And before you know it, they manage to put you far
from the first place, while one of theirs takes the lead. They will
annoy each other without picking a clear target, as long as one of
them is the lead; but when YOU are the lead, you better watch out.
You will NOT get a single moment of rest. They will do everything
they can to stop you, and they have the resources to. It's even worse
in a team match, where both you and your teammate must reach the
final space in order to win.
For
all the time I have played this game, I have won once. Only once, on
the easiest difficulty (Smooth Sailing), on the smaller board of the
two. And I tried. I tried really hard to win. I used all my tricks,
my cards, my coins. I tried! And I won only ONCE. O.N.C.E.
ONCE ONCE ONCEONCEONCEONCEONCEONCEONCEONCEONCEONCEONCEONCEONCE ONCE
ONCECNONCECNONCE Since I need to be a lot more productive with my time, you can probably see why I hardly ever play this game; what's more annoying than losing a half-hour of your life playing a game that is so rigged against the player that an actual victory is like an event to celebrate? This is going beyond “The computer is a cheating bastard”; this goes right into “The computer is a motherfucking asshole” territory. I deeply apologize for my foul language. But it's true! I mean it!
ONCECNONCECNONCE Since I need to be a lot more productive with my time, you can probably see why I hardly ever play this game; what's more annoying than losing a half-hour of your life playing a game that is so rigged against the player that an actual victory is like an event to celebrate? This is going beyond “The computer is a cheating bastard”; this goes right into “The computer is a motherfucking asshole” territory. I deeply apologize for my foul language. But it's true! I mean it!
I WON ONLY
O
N
C
E
Then again, maybe I should stop playing luck games. I think I've established in the past that my luck really isn't the best one around...
The
music is very meh and the art is simple and pretty. You get that
paper feeling when the characters move around, when the Book of
Magick flips its pages, and when the worlds in the large book open
and close. Bonus points for that aspect, but it's not exactly like it
can save it. Add a 1 to a 0/10, it still makes 1/10.
BOOM! You lose three coins! ...That's Player 1 in the tornado. In other words: You. You lose three coins. You, non-PC you. You, who everyone is against. |
The
gameplay is absolutely horrendous, for all the reasons I've
described: Insane cheating from the computer's part, which makes even
beating a board on Easy a nigh-impossible task. The AI is diabolical, the opponents are demonic, the boards are infernal, the playthrough is Hellish. Dante would rather revisit teh circles of Hell than play this... this... this thing. The characters
are one-dimensional, literally and figuratively; their so-called
personalities are implied but do not serve any purpose in the game.
And besides, it doesn't make much of a difference when all you can
really see is that they work together against you. There are way too
many windows telling you to pick something, activate an effect,
choose a player... There are also windows that ask you to confirm your choice. There are even windows popping up when these
effects have resolved. What's worse, those also appear on the CPU
characters' turns, which means you spend most of the time not moving
forward frantically pressing A to have their turns moving forward.
Not only will they kick your ass, they will not do a thing until
you've decided to let them have their turn. It's like you're permitting that asskicking of theirs on your own bottom. The Book of Magick really
doesn't add anything interesting enough, just more randomness and
luck in a game that has already WAY too much of it.
I'd
like to make little paper puppets out of the six characters in this
game, shove them in the foyer and set them on fire. That would be therapeutic, to say the least.
Final word: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR GGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!! |
Pop-Up
Pursuit is plain awful; boring for children, annoying for unlucky
players, and extremely annoying for the skilled players who still
won't win because of the goddamn luck factor. I couldn't care any less if there was more to
this game beyond the two boards and the extremely flawed system (In
fact, I checked: There are ONLY TWO BOARDS ON A WIIWARE GAME THAT
COST 800 POINTS, EIGHT FUCKING BUCKS FOR ALMOST NOTHING). I don't want to care. This was not worth 800 Wii
Points. This would not be worth 500 Wii Points. If this was sold at a
dollar store, I wouldn't buy it. If a kid forgot it on a table
somewhere, I'd pick it up... and throw it right into the nearest
wastebasket. Heck, I'd assume the kid left it there because he hated
it and wanted to get rid of it. I can't blame him. If it was a Wii
disk? I'd probably bring it in my backyard and burn it in a bucket,
like some people do with bad comic books; or I'd try to snap it in
half, see I don't have enough strength, and then use one of my
father's saws to try again and succeed this time around. Or I would lock it between two pieces of wood, bring out the hammer, and SWING IT TO DESTROY THAT CD! SHOVE NAILS INTO IT! DRILL HOLES INTO THAT CD! DESTROY IT! HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Phew... Sorry, I just hate games I cannot beat. I WON ONLY ONCE...
Calm down, Nicolas!
In short: Do
NOT buy this game. I'm dead serious here. Very bad games tend to do
that to me: All of a sudden, comedy goes to hide, like it's scared of
my angry side. I'll try to be a little funnier on my next hateful
review, but seriously, I can't promise a thing.
See
you next week for a Top 12 of the scariest Nintendo moments.
No comments:
Post a Comment