Tiny's PS2 Pizza Party, Episode 1: Buzz! Junior: Robo Jam
If I learned a lesson this weekend, it was not to forget your roots. Sure, we all talk about the PS3, Wii and Xbox 360 - and those systems are the newsmakers - but I sometimes forget that there's a multiplatinum best-seller sitting on my shelf with a catalog of games that could make the Library of Congress wince: the PS2.
With PS2 hardware sales still generating massive numbers and great software still being made for the system, it's a tad bittersweet that the PS2 is often overlooked in favor of its younger brother's generation of consoles. So I was pleased to delve back into the world of the PS2 to explore a series of party games in what I'm charily referring to as "Tiny's PS2 Pizza Party."
If you're a fan of the GayGamer.net Podcast, you may have heard me bitch once or thrice about party games, and how they typically arouse both my ire and my horror. So it was with a bit of incredulity that I took on the daunting task of reporting on not one but three party games for the PS2! I quickly forgot my reservations, but that isn't to say I went in unprepared: I invited a few friends over to my apartment with the promise of lots of red wine and the best pizza on the lower east side.
And then I forced them to play video games whether they wanted to or not.
Sure, I lied to my friends, but they really should have seen it coming. Read on to hear the tale of a group of gay men, a handful of Buzz! buzzers, and a whole mess of quality buffoonery.
I kick-started the evening with a little light-hearted fun that I thought might soothe the non-gamers among us: Buzz! Junior: Robo Jam. The Buzz! games have generally proven themselves to be more popular than they're given credit for - almost everyone lights up when they see the quiz-show style buzzers. Robo Jam takes the child-friendly fun of Buzz! Junior: Jungle Party, its predecessor, and makes it adult-friendly by replacing monkeys with robots and using the unique controllers as input devices for a collection of minigames. Since we were all new to the game, diving into play intended for a younger audience worked well - and as we continued to drink my wine, our inner children began to have a mighty fine time.
Robo Jam collects 24 minigames and works them into a competition of selectable duration and difficulty, and the game's whole interface is controlled using the simple, versatile Buzz! controller: four little multiple choice buttons and one big, occasionally-glowing red Jeopardy-style buzzer. Couldn't be simpler, right? Well, five gays and five bottles of unsung Bordeaux later, I can say that while it may be simple, Robo Jam sure is fun.
Each player (up to four, so one man was always handy to refill the stemware) takes the role of a customizable little robot, who are pitted against one another in a silly series of minigames like Crazy Conveyor, wherein you press the appropriate button to jump over a series of color-coded laser beams, or the definitely-addictive fun of Barrel Bashing, which requires you to hit the buttons that match the bottom barrel in a stack, so that your robot can whack that barrel away. Bomb-laden barrels require the big buzzer, and button presses queue up invisibly, so don't get cocky.
Blast asteroids with Astro Blaster, "celebrate diversity" with Odd Bot Out, or whack-a-mole with Mad Mallets - these minigames aren't revolutionary, but they're fun to play and the cuteness doesn't get in the way of the game's overall pace, which is minigame game requirement numero uno in my book.
Maybe I'm a bit burnt out on Wii games, because I took to the non-motion-sensitive Buzz! controller like a fly to stink - it was, in a very positive way, the anti-Wii. No goofy motions, no shattered televisions - just your thumb, the buzzer in one hand, and a comfortable second-tier Bordeau in the other.
My favorite game, without doubt, was Pillow Fight, which scored players' response times by flashing pictures of each robot hitting a robot of a different color with a pillow - if my blue robot popped up swatting the orange robot in the face, I had to press the orange button as quickly as possible. Sounds simple (okay, is simple), but super fun: it had me screaming "Who's the pillow-biter now?" to my boyfriend in what was perhaps, upon reflection, a bit of a drunken row.
And is there any compliment higher for a party game than playing well with liquor, really? Especially a game targeted toward the younger set? Well, there may be, but I ain't givin' it.
Tune in tomorrow to see what game I terrorized my queer quintet into testing next!
tiny dancer
Posted to Hot Stuff, Reviews, Video Games on 18 March 2008
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