Today’s Game – 9/15/2009 – Sneak King (Xbox / Xbox 360)
Yes, of all the games I could pick to touch on today, I decided to go back a couple of years and look at one of the “Trilogy of Burger Games”. In November 2006, Burger King sold a suite of XBox/XBox 360 games developed by Blitz. In order to buy them you had to also buy one of their value meals (or get the game used or later on from a liquidator).
Sneak King (XBox/XBox 360)
The first thing that I want to mention about the game is that it was somewhat of a technological wonder, having the same disc being able to be utilized in both the orginal XBox and the 360. Before the shouts of “Half-assed backwards compatibility!” come into play, play on the 360 version did feature achievements, whilst the Xbox version played like an Xbox game.
While many reviewers of the game criticized it for being bad on all fronts, with the horrible NPCs that can only see 3 feet in front of them, horrible controls, and shoddy mission design, it wasn’t a $60 game, not even $20, or even a $5 downloadable title – it was $3.99! And to add to it, it used commercials as the reference material. With that in mind, this is where the game excelled. If you use the reference that a movie is about 2 hours, and the game should run about 5 – 6 times the length of the movie, a game with about 10 – 12 hours of an enjoyable gameplay experience based on the IP is par for the course. Now, if the average commercial is 30 seconds, that rule of thumb would be 2 1/2 to 3 minutes, and the game accomplished it for 4 different commercials.
What stands out the most about the game isn’t the game itself, but the marketing and promotion that went into a promotional title. Anywhere a person would see BK advertising, the would see the combo of the game ad with BK accompaniment. This went on through the holiday season and quite a few copies had to have been moved since every Gamestop now has a dump bin of them for 99cents!
I’ll admit that I enjoyed the game, it was really a micro-sized licensed property that gave me the experience I expected. For the price, my expectations however were low, and that’s being kind. But where else other than America would you have to pay to play as corporate mascot, promoting obesity, in a slipshod game?
