Hail to the Chimp Review
By Jonathan Hunt - Posted Jul 10, 2008Politics is ugly. And this political satire of in action/party game form is even uglier in Hail to the Chimp for the 360 and PS3. X-Play approved this Review.
The Pros
- Politically influenced game modes are amusing
- News presentation style is limited but appreciated
- "Don't bogart that clam!"
The Cons
- Horrendous controls
- Repetitive and frustrating gameplay
- Ugly
- Comedy is wafer thin
My Declaration of Gaming-independence, as inspired by my experience playing the political satire laden, ultimately unjustifiable adventure through the high-stakes game of jungle politics, Hail to the Chimp:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all games are created equal, that they should be (but oftentimes aren't) endowed by their creators with certain unalienable factors, that among these are enjoyment, creative depth and the pursuit of something worth your hard-earned green... That whenever any game becomes destructive to these ends, it is the Right of Gamers to avoid it or to abolish it, and to play a different game built upon a foundation of such principles and organized around varied gameplay and narrative complexity, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their playability and justification for existing.
Law of the Jungle
When a scandal forces the removal of the King of the jungle (a lion of course), animals big and small battle for the throne in the jungle's first democratic election. Instead of choosing one of the 10 animal characters and attempting to earn the presidential appointment over the course of the game, you take control of a specific character at the start of each stage. The stages are set in a geographical location befitting the character you are controlling (snowy mountainside for the polar bear, Japanese garden for the octopus, wharf for the dock-working walrus... ok, most of the them don't make sense) and consist of a series of events (primaries) wherein you, rather obviously, attempt to acquire as many clams as possible, clams of course being the single most important constituency of voters in the animal kingdom.
As you collect the clams, you must also use them to fulfill particular tasks in the game's 16 game types. These events include stuffing ballot boxes (with clams), donating clams to opponents, slinging clams (mud) at cardboard cutouts of other candidates and even soliciting donations from corporate fat cats (literally cats wearing monocles. Clever, huh?). Each round carries with it a set of votes for the top three competitors, and whoever racks up the most votes by the end wins that stage's election.
Surprisingly, the concepts behind the game modes aren't terrible, and they are all framed well in the context of the game's simulation of a presidential race. Unfortunately, the gameplay, graphics, controls, collision detection, general mobility, computer AI, and pretty much everything else are all so inexcusably bad that you won’t even want to play the game long enough to see all of the challenge types or even finish the game's single-player campaign mode.
Shake Your Hand and Stab You in the Back...
Once you have had enough of playing against impossibly good AI opponents that inexplicably enjoy ganging up on you instead of going after the leader even if you are in last place, and if you can find three friends to dupe into playing with you, the game supports up to four-player multiplayer. The game modes are the same as in single player, however screaming in frustration is much more satisfying when it is aimed at a human opponent. For the political strategists out there, you have the option of teaming up with opponents during matches to either derail their chances of winning or just because you enjoy screwing with the democratic process. This tactic can be beneficial, especially when you are losing late in a match, but it hardly pays off as well as it does when the computer does it. And you will often fall even further behind since figuring out how to employ partner attacks while maneuvering as a single entity can be extremely difficult, especially when you are in the middle of the chaos that the game attempts to pass off as dynamic and thrilling party battling.
Stick To Your Party-Game!
As is obvious from the title and the previous paragraphs, the game is steeped in quasi-amusing political satire, almost to a fault. Aside from the gameplay, perhaps the most frustrating part of the game is how much time and effort the game's developers wasted on creating the ridiculous amounts of campaign ads, commercials and candidate interviews that make up a good 95% of the game's overall content. Even the menu screens and mission interludes are presented in the style of a television newscast (complete with a Walter Cronkite-esque woodchuck as the anchor), and there is also a news crawl at the bottom of the screen. While this blissfully tongue-in-cheek approach is certainly appreciated in a time of heightened political skepticism, in the end, I'm supposed to want to play the game, not sit around and watch limitedly amusing political satire when I could be watching the Daily Show, The Colbert Report or reading The Onion. The developers at Wideload wasted a lot of time and energy creating a ton of content that most people will never see because they tried to make their game funny before fun, and that will always spell disaster for a game.
Politics Is Apparently An Ugly Sport As Well
Graphically, the game is really a mess. Everything from constant glitching and framerate issues to ugly textures makes it hard to believe that the game runs on Unreal technology. (Although, I'm pretty sure they meant that it is powered by the concept of something so awful, so annoying, so frustrating, so downright unbearable that you can't help but scream out, "Unreal!" every two seconds. That's just a theory though.) Also, because the game tries to throw so much on screen at once (more objects = more fun apparently), it is oftentimes impossible to see your character amidst all of the poorly designed chaos. Not only does this leave you completely exposed to attacks, it also means you will often find yourself careening off the sides of stages to your death simply because you had no idea where you were in the first place.
Also, maneuvering around stages and interacting with objects and enemies is mostly a chore thanks to the controls, yet another of the game's many embarrassing failings. When they aren't clunky they're unresponsive and trying to find the precise points that allow you to cross bridges or reach platforms would try a rock's patience. And because of the camera angle, you have no depth perception either, which means successfully traversing maps will often come down to luck rather than ability (another valued quality in a video game).
Lame Duck, Chimp, Octopus...
If I didn't know any better (and believe me I don't), I would say that the team at Wideload were either trying to catch the eye of a television producer so as to spin the game into a cartoon series, or they were trying to find a place for a boat-load of content that they created for a cartoon show they hoped would be picked up but wasn't. Either way, the result is something that is practically unplayable and should be avoided at all costs. I'd say stick to making games and forget about trying to make the transition into a television or web series, but I don't really feel comfortable suggesting that given what is on display here.
Review by: Jake Gaskill
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