Oh god. This is the third straight week of crap. For three straight weeks, it's been nothing but mediocrity and averageness. When shall I be freed of this crap? WHEN!? But at least this time, I get some potentially redeemable crap. Now don't get me wrong; this game still has a lot of issues it needs to deal with. Yet underlying all those issues are some genuinely good ideas that I could see working in another game. Of course, on top of all those good ideas are some baffling design decisions that knowingly transform the overall product into an unenjoyable mess. This is almost like the Zelda CD-i games, except....no, that's pretty much it.

Right down to my ability to count this game's budget on a single finger. This one, to be specific. Every single element in this game's design feels completely cheap and heartless and just unappealing. For instance, listen to the music. Can you feel the lack of effort put into that song? Assuming this song makes you feel anything, that is? I have to imagine the composer spent more time listening to that song than he did actually writing it. And this is a track I can remember, which should tell you just what impressions the other tracks left on me. But at least the music left an impression on me, which is more than I can (or will) say for the mediocre voice work.

Fortunately, there's always the option to mute the TV and avoid that altogether, an option that you won't have with the graphics. If you thought the music sounded cheap, just look at the game. No, seriously, look at it. I've seen origami with more organic design than that. It doesn't look much better in motion, either. If you're not seeing a canned animation with little relevance to the situation, you're seeing a character flap their mouth open and shut while their puppet-master talks about dreams or whatever. Put it all together, and you get an inexpressive, completely dead looking game that doesn't mesh well with the fun board game vibes you see in other parts of the game. The occasional CG cutscenes are better, even if it isn't by much. They never find a perfect balance between 2D and 3D imagery, so they just end up looking awkward.

But perhaps it's the story that suffers the most from such a lack of investment. Yes, this game has a story, because somehow, you need to explain why Sonic and his friends are running around an exploding airplane. Surprisingly, the story fails so horribly on that account that it actually makes this situation less clear than it would have been otherwise. We start off with Sonic and friends being abducted into another dimension by FOX Kids cartoon reject Lumina Flowlight. She must save her world and reunite the Precioustones, and I guess she needs help from the Sonic Universe. I said "I guess" because they have to introduce themselves to her, implying that she just captured four people at random to help fight her war. And nobody's even remotely angry or bothered by this.

And this is all before the game actually begins. Once story meets game, it all falls violently apart. Perfect example: the entire goddamn premise. Each map has our four intrepid heroes competing against each other to....I'm not sure why. They're just dropped into the world and told to have at it, really. Then again, Lumina clearly knows where the Precioustones are (she points you right to them) and there's not much stopping her from grabbing them herself, so she could simply be an asshole. And speaking of assholes, Dr. Robotnik's here. Did he get pulled in to this alternate dimension, too? Is he gonna harvest the power of the Precioustones for his own nefarious purposes? Who gives a shit about pressing questions like that? We've got some boring, shallow, and ultimately meaningless platitudes about dreams or whatever to launch at you. Man, did the developers even bother with this game?

Yes, they did. The strange twist, though, is that the game's best ideas are what cause so many of its problems. Of course, by ideas, I pretty much only mean one: card-based movement. Each player chooses a card to determine just how far they move, and while everybody's drawing from a common pool, you can only see your personal collection of cards at any one time. For now, at least, this works in the game's favor. It brings a sense of competition and strategy, both of which allow for some fun moments. I mean, it's not much, but it's still enough to make the game entertaining. And it only gets better when you're using those same cards to battle for the Precioustones. Something about a competitive community feeling; I don't know. On the other hand, a lot of this only applies to multiplayer. In single player, your cards are always on display for everybody to see. Combine this with AI that doesn't bother hiding what a cheating bastard it is, and the feature feels designed specifically to screw you over.

However, there are much larger problems that the cards bring to this game, such as a really goddamn boring sense of order. A good board game often has a sense of unpredictability to keep the game exciting and ensure that no two sessions are completely alike; Sonic Shuffle fails on both accounts. Remember that card movement from before? Turns out it loses some appeal when you start every player on the exact same space. What's to prevent everybody from just making a beeline straight for the Precioustone? What's to stop the game from becoming completely flat and one-dimensional? Map design? At one point, that might have been a legitimizing factor if the maps didn't feel so....similar, and the unique elements on each map aren't important enough to change this. Honestly, time seems like the best thing that can happen for the game. Over the course of a single game, the sense of order slowly dissolves and chaos has its day, but the key word in that last clause is "slowly". I doubt a lot of players are going to have the patience to slog through a boring first half for the promise of a more exciting second half.

There are also mini-games to consider, but they jump too far toward the other extreme. The overwhelming majority of them feel like they boil down to luck, yet very rarely because of some design flaw. Sure, control and perspective and explanation issues certainly make the mini-games harder to enjoy, but.......what was my point, again? All I know is that most of the mini-games are luck-based by design. Perfect example: a mini-game where Eggman shakes up a can of soda (did I mention he's a petty asshole?) and places it alongside non-shaken cans everybody has to pick from (did I mention that the characters are fucking idiots?). That's all there is to it: pick a can and let the game declare a winner. Joy.

But there's more to the mini-games than this. To be fair, there are some that let you control your fate and require an actual degree of skill. Then again, a lot more are just fucking tag. You know what, though? You don't see these mini-games as often as you'd think, so it's not like they completely diminish this game's value. It's perfectly easy to ignore them while you're watching chunky Sonic characters dash straight toward the exact same spot on the board, all set against a story that makes things more confusing than they ever needed to be.....This game has a lot more to fix than I'd previously imagined.

Review Synopsis

• This game's aesthetic is so cheap..........Oh, I don't have a joke to close that off. I just want you to know that it's really cheap.
• "Quick! We must save Maginaryworld from the evil forces of Void. But first, could you tell me your names? Hopefully while you're all fighting each other?"
• But at least there's the game to look forward to.....sort of......not really......

Well, we have the indiscriminate mouth flapping and the mediocre story part down. All that's separating this video and Sonic Shuffle is a scene where Sonic is hanging out with his own super-self, somehow.

It's not gonna be this week. Maybe next week, but not this one. Now before I actually explain what makes the game bad, I should point out that, being the lonely bastard I am, I didn't even bother with the multiplayer, so this game might actually be worth playing if you're around other people. On your own, though? This game could hardly give a shit about your pathetic existence. It won't even make the slightest effort to engage you or make sure you're having a good time.

Although to be fair, I can't imagine the characters in the game are having much fun, either. Those of you familiar with the game are probably confused and wasting your time reading about games you've already played. After all, the game's just about collecting random bric-a-brac that fell from the sky. What's so bad about that? So very much. So very goddamn much. For instance, half the characters are very obviously gambling addicts. You don't even know them in any other context than that. So as the hero, your job is to help them overcome this addiction, right? Nope. It's actually to exploit it for your own personal gain and leave them in shambles. What do you care that they're now forced to live in a refrigerator box? It's not like you have to pay for your crimes or anything. The police require your help to solve every case that comes their way; they're completely powerless to arrest you for your horrible crimes.

That includes sending other to die in your place. Did I fail to mention that? You'll encounter many a character willing to duel you, but none of them ever fight you personally. Instead, they get somebody else to fight in their place. These are often the most violent mini-games in the bunch, so I can only assume this is a Roman gladiator-esque scenario, where the rich enslave the poor (usually Luigi) so they can die for their own amusement. Bowser has this particular atrocity down to an art, as some mini-games require you to murder a set number of his children. A number he himself set. How did Mario get to be such a thoroughly depressing experience? Hell, even the game's tagline is depressing. "Party on the Go"? What kind of hectic, coked out life are you leading that you can't even settle down for a few minutes and party in one place? Would a person who "parties on the go" even have a home in which they could safely party?

Maybe I'm just reading that line wrong. Maybe it means the party itself is on the go, as in "it is no longer present in this game." At least that's the impression I got from the single player mode. Mario Party Advance has could not care less whether or not you were enjoying the game. Its idea of engagement is sending you from location to location with only the occasional mini-game. I know that sounds offensively reductive, but that's really all there is to the quest structure. I'd say that it wastes time, but that implies that somebody could tease a purpose out of this. It's nothing but meaningless, menial busy work. The actual quests in particular really illustrate this point. I know I mentioned half of them simply ferrying you around the map while the game tries to think of something enjoyable, but that's only half the story. The other half is the game testing your basic math and reasoning skills, and I do mean basic. Most of the questions might as well be "What's 1+1" or "What color is red". You know, the insultingly simple kind of crap that doesn't even remotely bother to challenge or entertain you. And this goes on for 50 goddamn quests. How? Why?

Well, at least the mini-games are decent enough. Yes, they're usually very simple, but unlike before, this is a good thing. It means that I can jump straight into a mini-game relatively quickly and effortlessly. Yet more importantly, that simplicity doesn't prevent the mini-games from actually grabbing my attention. They still require some level of skill on my part, and there's enough meaningful variety throughout to make me actually want to play these mini-games rather than simply put up with them. I guess the vibrant, whimsical charm throughout is a cherry on top of the sundae. Of course, said sundae is itself a cherry atop a grilled cheese sandwich that hasn't even been grilled. So if you're thinking of playing this game, maybe you should ask yourself this question: "Would I eat a cheese sandwich after somebody poured some ice cream on it?" If your answer was "Yes", then you're probably five years old and shouldn't be reading this blog.

Review Synopsis

• "Thank you Mario! But our princess is in another castle! Caving a man's skull in with a baseball bat while Chain Chomp watches in approval........."
• "But before you go, could you remind me what comes after the letter A?"
• And then this is the part where I play a mini-game instead.