Review #5: EyeToy Play (10/07/23)

Sorry for the absence! Was busy playing other games that I can't really review yet because I wanna fully finish them (they're like, not shovelware lol). I'll review those when I'm done with them but to make up for my absence, I will try to start reviewing a lot of games over the next few days. To begin, an awful pack-in title with the somewhat innovative, Europe loved (for some reason it got so many more games here than anywhere else) EyeToy. EyeToy Play is a minigame collection with some good potential that it barely ever lives up to. To start with some positives, I think the UI is very nice. Each option in menus has a little disc with a cute icon on which is fun - it makes the game feel very playful and cheerful and I like that. Plus, each game has its own unique themed logo, which is always a fun touch. It also has some pretty good music, not the most complex stuff just some fairly basic menu and minigame music, but it can be pretty good. There's a decent bit of drum'n'bass and some disco and EDM in the Beat Freak minigame and it's all fairly nice. There's also uh... "When I'm Cleaning Windows" from a 1936 movie??? Odd choice, although it is fittingly used in the window cleaning minigame. The art style of the game is awesome and the character designs are stylistic and unique (I personally think Yumi and QT have the best designs), although "The Oracle" mascot is one of those insensitive old sensei trope characters which is very sad, but he only shows up if you go into the Help menu so at least he's not front and centre. He's the guide for the unbearably slow (and luckily, optional) tutorials for each minigame. Sadly, the weird silly EyeToy menu creature, outside of its minor menu appearances and inclusion in the UI, also only appears in these sections. Also, Vernon Bok is literally just Russell Hobbs from Gorillaz: his design is almost EXACTLY the same, other than Vernon having mildly lighter skin. Even his outfit, which SEEMS original, is actually THE OUTFIT OF DEL THE GHOST FROM THE CLINT EASTWOOD VIDEO. WHAT THE FUCK???? As far as I can tell every other character design is original but that is literally just exactly a Gorillaz character. Insane. Anyway, character rant aside, there's a few fun little bonus things that you can do. There's the "Play Room" which is just a thing where you can mess around with filters and little floating objects and stuff. You can choose stuff like a constantly changing, flipping and widening mirror or a web covered in spiders that you can grab and move around or ,the obvious best option, BUBBLES. IT HAS BUBBLES. You can mess around popping bubbles and it is so fun. The Play Room is effectively a sensory mess-around room and, frankly, that's awesome. If you want to wave your arms around manically to pop bubbles for the low price of £2, buy this game. Now. There's also a video cards thing, which is odd for a console with no internet connectivity (well, the PS2 did have peripherals for that but not in this game). You can record a video of yourself with the EyeToy camera and a microphone and then... save it. How do you send the video to someone? Well, you just. Meet them. In person. Yeah, it suggests you meet someone, give them your memory card (then, I assume, hope they don't delete your 100 hour Final Fantasy save file) and let them watch it. Convenient! Who on this earth has done this and why? You have to meet them to show them the video and then wait for them to give you the memory card back! The only other option is sending it by post which makes a bit more sense, I guess, but is still an awful idea. Unless you want a sort of post-death present, knowing you will die soon and so saving a video message from EyeToy Play to a memory card and leaving it for your child for their 18th birthday, which will then motivate them during their hardest time to push forward and beat the alien species attacking Earth or something, you've not got much to do with this feature. And finally, I'm actually going to get to the actual bulk of the game. Now you may wonder why I left that so long and the reason is... It's disappointing. Seriously. It's not awful and I don't feel like I've lost all semblance of joy and wish for my further existence on this mortal coil to end or anything: I just feel... bored. This isn't helped by the abysmal loading times between each menu. There are a few shining stand-out games that are genuinely super fun and, if expanded upon a bit more and added to a collection of other good minigames, could make a really good game. However, they are not either of those things. They are simply extremely fun games in an extremely mediocre package. Here's my review of every minigame:

Beat Freak Beat Freak is a pretty fun rhythm game, it doesn't innovate too much but it doesn't particularly need to, since you get to hit the notes with your hands. You hit the little CDs as they enter your speakers and it works pretty well and is pretty fun. Sadly, it only has four songs. I hope my urge for more of this game is fulfilled by another EyeToy game I bought, EyeToy Groove. Wishi Washi

This is... nothing. You just rub the screen to clean it off. It's slightly satisfying but there's nothing to do. There's the most minor hazard in the universe to avoid, a sponge that adds more bubbles to the screen, and a screen wipe bucket but aside from that it's just barely even a game. I'm sure it's slightly more fun with more people but I can't imagine ever wanting to go back to this game.

Keep Ups This game isn't particularly bad. It's not THAT good but it's also pretty fun to bounce around the ball. You're supposed to try to hit the enemies in the windows, but aiming is an impossible nightmare since you're just hitting the ball up. I feel like a basic rally of trying to keep the ball up for as long as possible without dropping it would have been a much more effective minigame, since bouncing the ball around is in itself pretty fun. The walls in this game also just kinda limit the ball's movement too, which makes it a bit less fun as well.

Boxing Chump

This is a really fun game limited by partially the EyeToy's capabilities and partially the limited exploration of the idea. It's a fun but simple boxing game: hit where the enemy isn't blocking. It's really fun to just beat the shit out of "Big Robo Bro" (yes, that is the enemy name), but I wish there was just... more. More levels and more enemies and just anything else to make it more replayable. Also, the addition of blocking would be very nice and add much more fun to the game, but sadly the EyeToy probably would be unable to detect blocking and therefore that couldn't have been done. An upgraded version of this in a Kinect or PS3 Eye game would be cool so I hope something like that exists. To make up for not being able to block you can just heal by... moving? You just kinda vaguely shake and then you heal. It's not very intuitive and it's fairly inconsistent, but it works okay. UFO Juggler

No juggling involved, really. Well, technically kinda but. No. If juggling is, as this game suggests, rubbing UFOs that move really slowly, even once you have rubbed them to get a boost, and that don't even allow you to rub them for that long to prevent them exploding, then I would understand why people are scared of clowns. Luckily, it is not. Juggling in real life is much better. Do that instead. Slapstream

QT and Yumi have dressed up as bunnies and you have to save them from the demonic, farting rat creatures that have kidnapped them in the clouds. Yes, apparently that's the official story, according to the manual. Basically, you just hit the rats and don't hit the girls. Rat haters and bunny lovers will love this game. It's basically just Whack-A-Mole, but slapping stuff like this is fairly fun. Not a deep game at all and it'd get boring quick but if you want to slap rats then this is certainly for you. Plate Spinner Stop making me rub shit. Stop making me rub shit. You are just supposed to rub the plates at a just right speed, which is never explained or achieved, otherwise your plates will break. Awesome. This game sucks. Boogie Down

Extremely basic copy the leader game with a minor rhythm/timing element. There's nothing to say really. It's not awful but I don't see myself ever playing it again. Ghost Catcher STOP MAKING ME RUB SHIT. (you just rub ghosts and hit bats, it's not fun)

Mirror Time An amazingly unique game that perfects the basic Whack-A-Mole formula into something wonderful. You have to hit the spheres with Kieu and not hit the spheres with Big Robo Bro, which seems simple, until parts of the screen are mirrored and flipped in various ways, making it confusing as to where your hand is and how to actually hit the correct spheres. This is genuinely the best way I have ever seen the Whack-A-Mole format executed and is probably the best game in this collection. It's already good enough on its own, but it'd be cool to add even more variations for the screen and to make the game even more confusing, I feel this could be built upon much more if it was its own thing/ in a minigame collection of higher quality. Rocket Rumble

Hit same colour fireworks then hit one of the plungers to set them off. That's it. It's a kinda fun idea but there's nothing to do with it. Also, the plungers never work for some reason, they were so odd and barely ever sensed my hands. Box art is pretty cool. The characters all around the screen is a very fun design, but there's an awkward white space at the bottom of the box for some reason. The back has this cool design of loads of TVs to show off gameplay, which I enjoy, but it's also in this white voidspace like the front, which only works for the front because there's lots of colours in the characters, whereas the back is mainly just grey and white. I didn't know where to say this but there's different versions of English voice acting in this game. Meaning the characters have British accents for me. Game characters never have British accents except in Xenoblade so it caught me off guard, especially since it's not even just Southern accents too. Game: 4/10 Music: 5/10 Box: 6/10 It needs more to it; everything needs to be expanded and improved to make this a good game. Except the bubbles. I'd buy this game just for the bubbles.