Sneak King
Platform: Xbox, Xbox360
Developer: Blitz Games
Publisher: BKGames
Rated: E
Nowdays people complain when a developer decides to add in game advertising, and certainly product placement in some games can be annoying if they’re overdone or out of place to the enviroment the game is in *cough* sorry my throat is kind of dry before I continue I need a nice refreshing Cherry Coke. Anyway, like I was saying, out of place ads can kill the atmosphere of a game. But there was a time when Yo! Noid and the Seven-Up Dots weren’t just background advertising but also starred in their own videogames. Burger King is bringing the mascot game back with a trio of games: Sneak King, Pocketbike Racer and Big Bumpin’. All for $3.99 each with a value meal.
But is it worth choking down a Whopper to play the games?
Story:
Here’s the story: You are the Burger King and it’s your royal duty to feed your hungry subjects. Of course you could just run up to the people and give them food, except that’s something peasants would do. You’re the King, and as such you need to deliver food in a way that reflects your position. That means suprising people with food to see the look of extreme joy/horror on their faces and actually giving the food with a little flair so they’ll have something to talk to their therapists for years after.
That’s pretty much it. You’re the King, there are hungry people, and you need to get them food. Not really Oscar winning material but if you like the nightmare inducing Burger King commercials than it’s enough to be amusing. For about 10 minutes. Though if you’re expecting a grand story from a game that has you play as a guy dressed up like royalty delivering fast food than you might need your ead checked.
3/10
Graphics:
Oddly enough not a bad looking game. It’s not going to blow your mind visually but Sneak King looks decent enough, if slightly bland. The only thing with a high level of detail in the game is the character model of The King, otherwise every other character model in the game is just decent enough not to be terribly ugly, even if you are delivering food to several identical twins. The backgrounds are the same, detailed and smooth though blander than a box of saltine crackers. Of the three games Sneak King is likely the least attractive.
While on the surface there’s nothing terribly offensive and the King himself looks great, there’s some clipping issues. Mostly just the King’s robe clipping through his body whenever he leans over or does some of the flair dances. The major disappointment is the lack animation of all the other characters roaming around in each of the levels. Everytime you suprise on of them with food they react with the same animation everytime. It would’ve been more interesting to see some people maybe run in fear or react slightly different when jumping out at them with food. The animations for the King work, but they also run too slow. You never really jump out of a garbage can to suprise someone with delicious hashbrowns, the King just sort of climbs sloooooooooooowly out of whatever hiding space he is in.
If you own an HDTV the games all support 720p and 1080i, which just makes the bland graphics slightly sharper. Even with some of the graphics complaints, it’s suprising that they are as good as they are, I’ve certainly seen worse games. It’s more than a little sad that Sneak King looks better in motion than the new Gundam game for the PS3.
5/10
Sound:
Budget sounds for a budget game. Some light cheesy background music, and instead of dialouge all the people roaming the levels speak sim-lish. There’s some various sound effects for completing missions and pulling off better flairs that aren’t annoying and that’s the best thing I can say about them.
Nothing hideous, though if you are playing it on the 360 here’s hoping you have some CD’s ripped to the HDD to listen to while playing.
4/10
Control/Gameplay:
The game controls like many other stealth based games. The people roaming around the levels have a cone of vision in front of them, if you step in front of it you’re spotted. There’s also a noise level indicator that can go up really fast if you are running. Left joystick moves, right joystick is for controling the camera. On the 360 the camera is inverted and you can’t change it at all which is slightly annoying while playing. Above the heads of various citizens wandering around will be a hunger indicator, a sort of speech bubble of a burger when they are hungry. These are the only people you can feed, and as they get hungrier it will start flashing red, wait too long and they’ll pass out. If you do sneak up on them before they pass out and hit the A button you’ll suprise them with food which will start the Flair Meter. This works essentially like a gold swing meter in other games, and you’ll want to stop it at the top to get the highest flair and most points. The higher the flair, the more ridiculous The King will deliver the food. Hiding is also important and when you get to something you can hide in there will be a white circle next to it, stand in the circle and press Y and you’ll hide. When a hungry person walks by press A to jump out.
And that’s the game. There are 80 missions in the game and almost all of them will be variations of feed X amount of people. Different missions will throw in time limits, flair conditions, or hiding conditions but it all boils down to the same thing EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. To say the game is repetitive is putting it lightly.
Still as far is the actual controls and gameplay are concerned it’s easy to get the hang of right away and works pretty smoothly even if there isn’t very much variety to it. Plus if you click in the left joystick you get King Vision where you get to look through the world from behind the King’s mask…and it’s pretty freaky.
7/10
Balance
The game is as challenging as trying to decide between a bacon double cheeseburger or an order of chicken fries. You get both, duh. I’m one of those video game dorks who can eat everything in sight yet the only fat I have is what’s probably clogging up my arteries.
It’s easy to be the King once you get the timing down. There might be some missions that will frustrate you, like delivering food to everyone on a level before they can pass out from hunger can be extremely irritating, but it’s just a matter of pattern recognition.
4/10
Addictiveness:
Of all our ratings this one is the most subjective. Gathering gamerpoints for completing ridiculous achievements on the 360 so you can show them off on Live is pretty addicting, but that can be said for almost any 360 game. I couldn’t sit there and play the game for a long time in a row, however in short bursts it can be a fun game to keep going back to just for the sheer weirdness of it all.
This is the type of game where you either completely hate it or just sort of like it. I just can’t see anyone loving the game so much that they play it non-stop.
4/10
Appeal:
Did you think the Burger King commercials were funny?
Depending on how you answer that question will ultimately determine if this game is appeals to you or not. In some ways it shows some PR guy at Burger King knows what makes those commercials work and translated that weird creepiness to a digital format (other than the random King cameo in Fight Night Round 3). However if you thought the commercials were lame than playing a whole game which pretty much acts out the commercials isn’t going to appeal to you.
And if the commercials gave you nightmares…and switching to the first person view will keep you awake nights.
5/10
Originality:
I’m going to give this a high score despite the fact that the game uses the same kind of Stealth based gameplay that you’d find in other games for a couple of reasons.
You’re not sneaking up to kill or steal from people, instead you’re delivering them food. Is there any other stealth game where you deliver food? The flair meter. I doubt there’s another game where you dress as a King and do the running man while puling a Whopper from out of nowhere. Maybe there’s a japanese game where you can do that though. However you want to slice it, Sneak King will remain on of the oddest, most unique game for the original Xbox and will require one massive acid trip before developers make a weirder game for the 360.
9/10
Replayability:
It’s fun for awhile, repetitive after that, and replaying the 80 mission is just not something you’ll want to do if you make it through them all. Playing through the whole game more than once is like talking to a friend who just doesn’t get that just because he told one funny joke doesn’t mean he should keep repeating it over and over again.
3/10
Misc:
You know, I might’ve slammed the game a couple of times in this review for it’s extreme repetitiveness, however I can easily think of worse games off the tope of my head that cost way more money. I’m betting you could get more satisfaction for your $4 of playing Sneak King than the $40+ it costs to play the new Superman game. If we were judging just by the sheer amount of entertainment per dollar amount spent, the Burger King games would be games of the year.
Sneak King stands as King among the B-level games.
9/10
Scores:
Story 3/10
Graphics 5/10
Sound 4/10
Control 7/10
Balance 4/10
Addictiveness 4/10
Appeal 5/10
Originality 9/10
Replayability 3/10
Misc 9/10
Overal Score: 53/100
Final Score: 5.5/10 (Average)