ESRB RATING: E10+
DEVELOPER: FRONTLINE Studios
PUBLISHER: Destination Software, Inc.
REVIEWER: A.D. Olson
DATE: 2007-07-01
GAMEPLAY REVIEW
Chicken Shoot... Ah, yes, the budget game that has been pushed back several times, presumably because some QA team was doing their job, trying to save the reputation of those involved with this atrocity. Well, it finally released, and idiot me decided to waste my $30 on it. To be fair, I haven't yet seen a review for this title, so I had no idea what to expect. Actually, I was pretty certain it wouldn't be good, but I could never have predicted this.
So, you play as a disgruntled farmer with some kind of large object obviously shoved up his rectum (hey, there is never any explanation as to why he would be killing his own chickens like this, so I have to assume). The only thing I could tell from what the game gives me is that they somehow woke him up from a nap, and that made him really angry and trigger-happy.
As this farmer, you shoot various chickens which are doing various things. Some are washing clothes, some are flying by, some are flying towards you. Others are listening to music, hiding behind buildings or trees, or whatever. You can upgrade your guns too, if you shoot the right chicken... And why there are chickens flying around with guns strapped to them, I have no idea, and I'd rather not know. Things that chickens don't do in real life seems to be the key to this game. If it's supposed to be funny, well, it isn't. The ducks in Duck Hunt didn't do anything except fly around the screen, and that was great fun for the whole family. You didn't see them baking cookies or skateboarding around town.
Your goal in Arcade mode is to shoot a specific number of chickens, and in Classic mode you're trying to get points, but have a time limit. Aside from these minor differences, the games are identical. Shoot chickens, go to the next level. Shoot chickens, go to the next level. At least the title of the game is appropriate.
I sat through all eleven levels of identical gameplay, so that you didn't have to. Well, that's not true; my wife played through them, as I couldn't bear to play past the first five. The only difference from one stage to the next is the large, static background image, music, and what the chickens wear on their heads. That sounds like a lot, but it's not. It's as basic as a skinnable/themeable Pac-Man game. But your reward for completing the entire game? NOTHING! Oh, you get to put your name in the high score charts, and then you're booted back to the menu screen. If you're going to put me through a half an hour of misery like this, I should at least get a "game over" screen and possibly a credit roll, but no, not in Chicken Shoot.
Multi-player isn't a boost to this game either. In fact, it's identical to the single-player mode, but in fact is worse because the screen is split vertically, which enhances some control issues that I will touch on later.
Crave Factor: 3
GRAPHICS & ANIMATION
There isn't much to say here. Everything is 2D sprite-based, bright and colorful. The backgrounds which change from level to level are large and scrollable vertically and horizontally. They are very simple, but then, so is the rest of Chicken Shoot.
The animation is as barebones as it gets - a few frames per chicken. It works, though, and it's better than static sprites sailing across the screen. That's about the only animation, really, as there are no cutscenes to speak of.
I'm really not impressed with this one, as I've seen much better games pulled off with Flash by high school students. Even some of the projects that I was involved in back then are better than this, animation and graphics-wise.
Crave Factor: 1
MUSIC & SOUND
Each level has its own music, which is basically a short clip that gets on your nerves pretty quickly.
The sound effects are no better, as they are very repetative, low-quality, and annoying. Especially the farmer's laugh - it might possibly be even more annoying than the dog in Duck Hunt.
The only good thing about the sound and music are that you can scream a constant stream of jibberish to drown it out. Or you can just turn them off - a great feature to have on this kind of game, and for that, I'll give it an extra two points.
Crave Factor: 3
CONTROLS
The basic concept of point and shoot works well here, until you have to scroll around on the screen. If you go too far left, right, up or down, the scrolling stops, which is confusing and unpolished. This becomes a major problem in multi-player mode, when your bounding box is slashed in half vertically. New gamers will be frustrated by this, and for that reason, this is definitely not a pick-up-and-play kind of game for the Wii, as Rayman, Wii Sports, and Wii Play all tend to be.
To fire, you pull the B trigger and to reload you press the A button. If you have multiple weapons, you can change them with the 1 button. This works well enough, but the movement all over the screen really deflates the potential where this one could have shined.
Crave Factor: 4
EXTRA VALUE-ADDED FEATURES
There is one mini-game extra on this disc, aside from the main chicken-hunting gameplay, and that is the egg catch. You play as the farmer, who puts down his shotgun for a few seconds so that he can collect eggs from the chickens in the chicken coup. Well, the controls in this mode are beyond bad; in fact, I have to give them the award of Worst Wii Controls to date. The manual tells you to point at the corners of the screen, but there is no cursor on the screen to indicate where you are pointing, and it doesn't matter how hard you try, or how patient you are with this mini-game, you will not catch those eggs, because what you are trying to make the farmer do, and what the farmer actually does, will always be two totally different things. If, somehow, you manage to catch one or two eggs, then it is entirely by coincidence. Aside from this, there is nothing, and I think that Chicken Shoot is lucky I don't rate my games on a scale that goes below zero, because this egg catching game actually damages an already horrible game.
Crave Factor: 0
CONCLUSION
Much like Big Brain Academy: Wii Degree, but worse, this one got very little spin time in my Wii, and that's where it ends. I will probably never touch this game again, and the sad fact is that I'm likely stuck. I wouldn't accept this game as a gift, and so I can't in good conscience sell this to someone else either.
It's not fun, so don't pick this one up just because you see the two-Wii Remote icon on the back of the box art, unless somebody won't pay you back some money that they owe you and you plan to force them to play this until they cough it up.
If you want a fun shooting game for the Wii, there is one included in Wii Play that outshines this game in all aspects, and as a bonus, you get several other mini-games and a Wii Remote.
This is quite possibly the worst game I have ever played, yes, worse than E.T. for the Atari 2600. The only reason I'm giving it as high a score as I am is because it is budget-priced. That said, it is the same price as Resident Evil 4, and it costs more than Splinter Cell: Double Agent. I'd say look into those two games if you've only got about $30 to spend.
In short, if it walks like a Duck Hunt rip-off on crutches, and talks like a Duck Hunt rip-off with a hole in its trachea, then it's probably Chicken Shoot.
Overall Crave Factor: 3 out of 10
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