2013 Game Review Haiku, #21 – Doritos Crash Course 2

Slide jump for big air
Run up walls like you don’t care
For free, this is fair

–

These little haikus proved to be quite popular in 2012, so I’m gonna keep them going for another year. Or until I get bored with them. Whatever comes first. If you want to read more words about these games that I’m beating, just search around on Grinding Down. I’m sure I’ve talked about them here or there at some point. Anyways, enjoy my videogamey take on Japanese poetry.

Doritos Crash Course 2, now with free-to-play gimmicks

Over the years, I’ve stepped away from Doritos. It all really started when I got seriously ill the day Obama was first sworn into office–not because, just using that day in history to place you in the moment–and ended up vomiting a lot back in my teeny, tiny studio apartment before passing out for hours in bed while FX continuously played Troy for like six to eight hours. It was a nightmare. And I had eaten some Doritos Cool Ranch chips earlier for lunch that day, and well…they weren’t any better coming up. Ever since then, I’ve fully stayed away from all things Cool Ranch–called Cool American in Sweden, something I learned recently from Giant Bomb–but have, on occasion, enjoyed a Nacho Cheese chip now and then.

But I’m not here to just talk about chips. Doritos does other stuff, too. Like videogames. Well, they support folks making games and use their name to brand it. If you’ll recall with me, back in late 2010, a game called Doritos Crash Course was released for free on the Xbox 360. It was surprising, for sure, an energetic mix of timed platforming and region-related spectacle, but fun all around. As well as free. It’s now been a couple years, and we’re getting the sequel for free too, though it has changed quite dramatically, even if it looks and–for the most part–tastes the same.

Instead of having levels based around specific regions like the United States or Japan, they are now built thematically. The first one is a jungle, maybe Mayan-based. And the second one appears to be snowy. Don’t know what the other two look like. Originally, your goal was simply to get to the end of the course in the best time, avoiding pitfalls along the way; now, as you run left to right, you can collect Stars, tackle secondary objectives, and use alternate paths to get to the end faster and much more successfully. Stars are used to purchase things outside of the level–these can be Avatar accessories, which do come with a stat and flavor text, or additional levels, side paths, and jinxes. And then this is where Doritos Crash Course 2 shows its free-to-play side, with you being able to buy additional Stars with real money. Well, real money that you turn into Microsoft Points. But still: microtransactions.

Just like in Happy Wars, I can easily ignore all the FTP gimmicks until it gets in my way of actually playing the game. So far, that hasn’t happened, though it looks like I’ve have to return to previously completed courses to find hidden stars if I want enough to unlock more levels. No big deal. I just don’t want to have to pay for power-ups or extra Stars in hope of progressing forward. The game suffers from tiny text syndrome, which makes reading some of the level requirements and secondary objectives dang difficult, but when in full screen, the game is pretty and runs smoothly. You can now run up walls, too, which I don’t remember being in the original, and it can be tricky, though Tara found a way to squirrel hop from wall to wall which is pretty effective. Hey, we also played some local multiplayer, too, which zooms out extremely far, but we were still able to run and climb with the best of ’em.

Looking forward to checking out more. Oh, and it is still a ton of fun to slide down a slope, jump to a trampoline, and fly over some deadly obstacle to finish in first place. Mostly because my Avatar whips out an electric guitar and jams.

All Achievements Achieved: Harm’s Way

Harm’s Way is one of two finalists for the Doritos Unlock Xbox competition where developers created Doritos-themed games. The other game is Doritos Crash Course. Ironically, both games are not, um, Doritos-themed, but full-fledged arcade titles with their own strengths and weaknesses. The ultimate winner of the competition was rightfully Doritos Crash Course, but the mega-chip company also tossed $50,000 at the Harm’s Way‘s creator for a job well done. Not too shabby. It’s definitely better than a lifetime supply of their All-nighter Cheeseburger chips. ::barfs::

Right. So, Harm’s Way is a racing game, but with a twist. One can try to beat their opponents by manning a turret and blowing other cars to bits before they cross the finish line. Conversely, if you’re controlling a car, other opponents can do this to you too. And that’s it. You race, you shoot, you explode, you swing around corners, you admire the above-par graphics, you sit in a turret and wait for cars to come around the corner, and you unlock Achievements with ease.

The hardest Achievement, surprisingly, was this one:

Affiliation (10G): Join a multiplayer game for the first time

Yup. Both Harm’s Way and Doritos Crash Course accounted for more than two million combined downloads since being released for free on Xbox Live Arcade, but it took me weeks to actually find enough people to start up a multiplayer game. Funny, that. Now that all 12 Achievements have been unlocked, I don’t really foresee myself playing this one ever again. Racing games, even ones with twists, aren’t my thing, and I’d rather work on my timeliness over at Doritos Crash Course. I mean, that game won for a reason–it’s a ton of fun!

I’m going to try to make All Achievements Achieved (AAA) a thingy. I’m really close on 100%-ing a few other games as you can see from the sidebar list. This will also help immensely with the backlog slack and my overall mental stability.

Don’t judge Doritos Crash Course by the Doritos part

The holidays are almost here, and even the Xbox LIVE Marketplace is celebrating with gifts by giving gamers TWO free games to download: Doritos Crash Course and Harm’s Way. I’ll talk about the latter in another post as I’d like to focus most of my time today on Doritos Crash Course, a game that is sure to surprise just about everyone.

Doritos Crash Course is a bouncy mix of Wipeout, American Gladiators, and ‘Splosion Man. Yes, all of those. Lumped together. With bonus Michael Jackson dance moves added in. Basically, you have to get your Xbox LIVE avatar from one side of the screen to the other by jumping over ledges, swinging from ropes, dodging hammers, and bouncing on trampolines, as well as avoiding a bunch of other typical platformer perils, the most nefarious being water balloons. Oh, how I loathe ’em.

Unlike Harm’s Way, which more or less hands you Achievements on a silver Achievement platter, the 12 in Doritos Crash Course do require commitment. As of this post, I’ve gotten three:

That’s Gotta Hurt (10G): Got smashed by 3 hammers in a row

Roadrunner (10G): Run at top speed when you’re about to wipe out

American Hero (20G): Finished the USA Levels

Hero of the Americas is right! Hope to get some more Achievements tonight. A few require your avatar to do some silly in-game tasks; these are easy things like swinging back and forth on a rope X number of times, but they definitely slow you down and then your chances at the gold medal disappear. So I will save ’em for later.

Played a round online against some Xboxers, as well as raced against Tara’s avatar via local multiplayer. It’s a surprisingly well done game, with the constant threat of failure on every jump, swing, float, and bounce always overhead, and the controls are really tight. One doesn’t need supreme platforming skills, but if you really struggled with ‘Splosion Man then this might not be for you. But you should still get it anyways. Why? The game is FREE, packed with Achievements, too. So, yeah. Download it and have fun watching yourself getting smacked into the TV’s screen or doing a little dance–the avatar animations are the best use of avatars so far.

On a more personal note, I don’t really like Doritos chips. Not since that day way back in 2008 that I got violently ill after having some ranch-flavored ones with my lunch. I’ve vowed to never eat ’em again ever since…so when I say this is the most fun I’ve had with Doritos in a long time, I really do mean it!