 Review By: Siou Choy |
Developer: | Barking Lizards |
| Publisher: | THQ | |
| Genre: | Action | |
| ESRB: | Everyone | |
| # Of Players: | 1 | |
| Online Play: | N/A | |
| Accessories: | N/A | |
| Buy Now: |   |
More unbelievably, the game still uses passwords. After playing through just a few semesters, I had a password list as long as my arm! Seriously, the Nintendo age is long, long gone – as fun as a lot of those games were, it’s ancient history, alright? No one should ever have to type in passwords anymore; not in this day and age. This problem becomes particularly egregious when you’re dealing with passwords as absurdly long as the ones found in this game. Did I mention they were case sensitive passwords at that? After my first evening of torture and endurance training, I almost gave up, just because I had to put in one of these passwords to pick it up again the next day. Seriously, even if the game weren’t the foul and stinking slice of excrement that it is, no one, and I mean nobody, in their right mind or not, would be desperate enough to play the game to endure such torture.
OK, ok, searching desperately for a positive…the game had a few good mini-games in it. Not good enough, mind you, to warrant having to play them over and over again (3 times each!) just to get through a single semester. Generic game facts: there are three semesters in the game, for those with the patience of a saint you’d need to get that far. Then there’s a party at the end where the challenge is that you have to keep people interested in coming to it (says something, doesn’t it?). As you get further and further in Zoey 101, the mini-games start to feel endless. For example: while you start off doing three laps in “Jet-X Racing”, it somehow becomes eight to complete the Dare. Who does eight laps in any racing game? Don’t even get me started on “Chemistry”: it was the longest, most boring version of the old handheld game Simon that I’ve ever encountered. The “Sushi Fund Raiser” could have been a good mini-game if it weren’t for the fact that practically all of the ingredients look exactly alike, making picking out the proper ones for the world’s slowest sushi chef to prepare far more difficult than necessary. I must admit, though, it was fun schooling that loser “Logan” in basketball. Come to think of it, that might have been one of the few good mini-games in the entire game. OK, I changed my mind – that one positive I mentioned earlier is a decidedly qualified one…
Graphics – good God in heaven. The sum total of character designs in Zoey 101 consist of one female and one male character model, with hair or skin color altered slightly to somehow represent differences between characters. I mean, literally, the only difference between (just for example) Zoey and Farfalla is darker hair. But every single character uses one of the two base character models (male or female), with the barest and slightest of variations – we’re talking a clear and consistent case of “who the hell am I playing as”, it’s that bad. Think that’s bad? For some of the mini-games, such as the absurd “Disc Golf”, Barking Lizard (Frank Zappa is embarrassed at your sad attempt at an homage) didn’t even bother animating characters of any sort. The game consisted solely of an overhead shot of trees and a flying disc. Wake up, guys - the target market for Zoey 101 may be young, but not that young that they won’t be able to see what a slapdash, substandard effort you put into this.
Zoey 101 leaves one wondering if school life was ever really quite this lame. Luckily, even for the biggest losers among us, it’s only like this in bad TV shows and even worse games. For those who don’t have to waste your time on games like Zoey 101 because it’s your job, do yourselves a favor and don’t waste your time on this stinker.
Bottom Line:
Zoey 101 isn’t the sort of game I would see pre-teens lining up to buy. I’m sure there must be one or two rabid Jamie Lynn Spears fans out there, gleefully booking their nights around episodes of this televised masterwork, but then again…I seriously doubt it. Let’s face the facts: girls would rather play quirky games like Animal Crossing, Harvest Moon or Cooking Mama than this sort of bland crap. Boys seem to play the same genres no matter what their age, so they’ll be more likely to pick up a racing, sports, fighting, shooter or survival horror game than something as gimmicky and lame as Zoey 101. It’s the end of the marking period for Barking Lizard and THQ, and it’s looking like summer school beckons. Zoey 101 should receive a failing grade with gamers of all ages.
| Pros: | Cons: | Final Score: |
|---|---|---|
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| 2.5 |
Posted: 2007-05-20 13:28:15 PST