VideoGameCritic wrote:Retro - your wife got this for you and you didn't make her play it with you??
You need to play it with her and report back! It's your civic responsibility!
Could be some good review material in there.
Took me long enough, but my wife and I finally got the chance to give this game a try. We played against each other and here were our thoughts:-Let's start with my only positive remark: I think the graphics are pretty decent for a 2600 game. I could be wrong, but the house exterior and interior (and creating a slight 3D perspective), and the large characters, seem like a step up from the usual 2600 fare.
-Decent idea for a simple game (especially for kids), but the execution is terrible. It's funny that the box says Age 5-12 right on it.. but I don't think any 12 year old would find fun with this, and a 5 year old could never figure out these controls.
-The music is obnoxious. But even worse, it replays each time you enter another room. Presumably your human opponent has his/her back turned when you hide... but still, the music restarting gives away the fact that you are moving between rooms. Therefore we had to play with the sound off.
-I agree with you VGC -- it is impossible to get some of these hiding spots to register at all. At best, less than half of the 20 hiding spots are easy to use. This is the games biggest flaw. It basically requires you to have the manual too, because otherwise you'll never figure out most of the spots. And again, even when you know where they are, the game is not forgiving at all -- you must be 100% precise in your locations and movement to enter the spots. It took us around 15 minutes just to figure out how to hide under the bed. Another problem with this issue is that a good player (i.e., someone who is familiar with how to enter the spots) can always beat most other players by hiding in the spots that are hard to enter. No way that 5-12 year old kids could figure this stuff out.
-On a related note, this issue also makes it extra hard on the seeker. The seeker never enters a spot unless the hider is in there. So when you check a spot, you never actually know if you are checking it properly, since you don't enter it. So.. is your opponent not under the bed, or are you just failing to check that spot properly? There is no way to know. (At least as the hider, you know you aren't doing it right, because you aren't physically entering the hiding spot.)
-The character models have a strange appendage coming out from their waistline area. Supposedly it's an arm, but it definitely looks like something else.. And it makes you wonder what's really going on when Player 1 and Player 2 go behind the couch together...
-Bottom line: I know you were hoping for some hilarity VGC, but sadly any humor in this game comes solely from the concept and the box/manual. The game itself is just plain bad.. way too hard to play, and no excitement to make up for it. Playing it with a friend just generates frustration, without any laughs, so it doesn't even have any "so bad it's good" qualities. This is an F- game, through and through.