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Fuzion Frenzy 2 Mini Review

Gwynne Dixon

16/02/2007

It's been five years since Fuzion Frenzy on the Xbox. Now it's back with a new engine under its hood...

Let's cast our minds back to the original Fuzion Frenzy on the Xbox. It was released as one of an impressive line of launch titles in March 2002 and the developers Blitz had a reasonable amount of success with it. As I remember, its mixture of short games which were guaranteed to be nail-bitingly close made it prime fodder for good television, hence the fact that it was a favourite for tournament play on the few televised games magazines around at the time.

Five years up the line and we get a sequel for the Xbox 360, although this one has been developed by Hudson who is also responsible for the similar Mario Party titles. Hudson have kept the standout mini-games from the original FF such as the turbine jumper, which requires jumping over or ducking under laser beams while revolving on a turbine. Another is Sumo Clash, which sees your character inside a spherical cage similarly to Atlaspheres on the ITV Saturday night classic The Gladiators. These retain the engrossing gameplay of their predecessors but, with the exceptions of a couple of new introductions, the other 40-odd mini-games are less varied than the personalities of worker ants.

For starters, a large portion of them are simply running about in an arena and punching/kicking your opponents with the aid of an incredibly bad combat system. Sure, each one is slightly different and you may have to avoid some lightning bolts, attain Oxygen from air bubbles or run away from the vacuum of space along the way but, generally speaking, these events are repetitive and tedious. Other mini-games only require that you type in a combination of buttons in the right order, while one game is as complex as to demand that you - gasp! - Repetitively tap X... that's literally all you do! California Games managed to do better than that two decades ago.

As I said, there are a couple of exceptions and these may even rival the mini-games from the brilliant Super Monkey Ball series. Hot Shot places each player in a turret which moves along one ledge of a square arena. Players must repel pinballs which come near their ledge and this turns the ball to their colour. The aim is for that pinball to then fall off an opponent's ledge. This is truly inspired but only manages to provide a few bailing buckets of water on the sinking ship that is Fuzion Frenzy 2. Also, let's not forget, the Super Monkey Ball games offer considerably more than just their mini-games and this is all there is to FF2.

Sorry, maybe I should be slightly fairer than that. FF2 does have a few different modes to choose from both online and in single player. Having said that - while there's nothing unbelievably dim-witted about the AI (there's nothing particularly clever about it either), you won't find yourself jumping at the chance to play an extended session of single player mini-games for obvious reasons. Even the Microsoft PR team would admit that FF2's main aim is to provide multiplayer fun and mayhem.

Anyway, as I was saying, the game modes: first up is Tournament, which is as generic as it sounds. You travel to a few planets (the mini-games are grouped into planets) where various contenders make game selections, you play some cards before each game which can multiply your score or let you pinch other people's multipliers (these are not that great, just in case you were wondering) and the aim is to win planets by scoring the most points in the games played there.

This is made all the worse by a master of ceremonies for the tournament who caps of a general annoyance about the game. When you're playing games like Pro Evo or Everybody's Golf and you notice certain tell-tale traits in the voice-overs, translations or general usage of English grammar that give away the games' Japanese origins, it usually endears you to the game. Be it the super-cute characters in Everybody's Golf or the post-match player summaries in Pro Evo that say something like: 'he played well for his team making direct passes and critically scoring'; it always seems to add that extra touch of Japanese gaming magic. However, when a game is this bad it just becomes annoying. The master of ceremonies' infuriating voice-over, the grating quips of the clone-like characters when they win and the synopses of each mini-game which near enough all begin "a game where..." will drive you bonkers within the first half hour.

Other game modes include Mini-Game Frenzy, where you can have free reign over which games you want to play/practice and Custom tournament which, again, is as generic as it sounds. All three are available on Xbox Live.

What can I say other than don't buy this game? Some next generation games have stunning graphics, epic soundtracks, provide 48 hours of gaming but they are as much fun to play as a triangle in the school orchestra. Others don't have the razzmatazz of a blockbusting EA-style title but are more fun than a pogo stick in a bouncy castle. Rarely do you find a modern game which does none of the basic five tenets of gaming judgement - originality, gameplay, longevity, graphics and sound - at least half well. FF2 is one of these rare titles.