Whacked!

Overview

Whacked! is an action game based around a fictional game show and featuring a cast of abnormal cartoon characters. Gameplay involves moving your character around an arena and picking up weapons with which you can attack the other characters in the arena. Characters also have the ability to strafe and ground pound, and when characters take a sufficient amount of damage they are considered “whacked” and are temporarily removed from the game until they respawn. The game also contains power-ups via collectable question marks and big red buttons which will bestow effects such as temporary invincibility or giving all players homing missiles.  

The game has six different gametypes; Combat in which players have to collect the required number of stars while whacking other characters to steal their stars, Dodgeball in which all characters can only attack with dodgeballs and have a limited number of lives, Grab ‘n’ Run in which players must pick up a trophy and attempt to hold it for as long as possible, Fragfest which is a deathmatch mode, King of the Hill in which players must stay in a specified area for a specified time and Chicken, a one-player mode in which players must run around the arena killing chickens and collecting the stars they drop. 

The eight playable characters in the game are Eugene, Charity, Lucky, Lucy, Toof, Van, Otto and Lance with Lucy arguably being the title character. In terms of gameplay the characters are all identical apart from the fact that they will each perform a different special attack for a limited time after an exclamation mark power-up is picked up. In addition to local and online multiplayer there is also a five stage single-player mode. In the single-player mode the player chooses a specific character and runs through the game show (which is hosted by Van) in an effort to win their character the secret grand prize. In between each stage a short cutscene or fake advertisement will be played. The cutscenes are different for each character but all characters follow a similar storyline which starts with them being interviewed by Van and ends with the show being cancelled, them being betrayed by Van who turns out to be an evil imp and them being dragged down into hell. If players can beat Van in hell they win the grand prize which is exactly what the winning character desires. 

Along with Moto GP, Whacked! was the one of the two games that beta testers received a demo of in the beta test of Xbox LIVE. Demos of Whacked! and Moto GP also came free with the Xbox LIVE starter kit for a year. Despite the games notable Xbox LIVE support it did not support online voice chat. 
 

Attacks and Stages

Weapons

Bee-Hive 
Cactus 
Cannon 
Cleaver 
Cluster Duck (a rubber duck grenade) 
Dodgeball 
Freeze Gun 
Goodbye Doggie (a deployable attack dog) 
Mallet 
Missile 
Pitchfork 
Plunger Missile 
Shish-Ka-Bob 
Stapler 
Star Mine 
Stick of Reason (a baseball bat) 
Sticky Bomb 
The Shocker (a taser) 
Yolk-O-Matic (a contraption which launches eggs) 
Urp! (an ordinarily useless can of soda)  

Exclamation Point Attacks

Charity- Special stars appear which act as stars for Charity but star mines for everyone else. 
Eugene- Whirls around attacking opponents with his spinning hat. 
Lance- All opponents are given purple hats and now drop many stars when hit. 
Lucky- Turns into a tornado. 
Lucy- Can give opponents a kiss of death to send them flying. 
Otto- Zs begin flying out of his body when he is near opponents. If they hit the opponents the opponents drop many stars. 
Toof- Puts on a chef’s hat and all opponents become hamburgers. 
Van- Two of his minions begin fighting alongside him. 
 

Stages

Arctic Pipeline 
Can Can 
Car Crash 
Christmas Tree 
Club Bano 
Death Wall 
Hell 
High Rise 
Jeffrey’s Kitchen 
Joyride 
No Trespassing 
Pirate Ship 
Spacewalk