February 20th, 2004

So. I've done it. I have beaten "The Scorpion King: Rise of The Akkadian." I can finally stop torturing myself with this godawful game. How did it ever come to this? Let me tell you a story...

Many moons (and noons) ago, I was over at my STUFFS cohort, Kelley's, place. I had just finished schooling him in every game under the sun and was ribbing Kelley about it. I thought he was being a good sport about it, but then he said, "Yo, T, have you ever played this?" as he pulled out the Scorpion King game for the cube. I told him that no, I never had. He told me to give it a spin. I knew what he was doing - punishing me for being better than him in every way, but I decided to play along. Because I'm just that kinda guy. I started playing and was appalled by the whole experience, but I didn't let on. Instead, I focused on destroying all of the pots scattered about the beginning level. "Damn pots!" I'd say as I crushed another piece of evil in clay or ceramic form. At first I could only strike at the pots but soon I was taught how to pick up and throw the pots and jump into the air and stomp the pots underneath my pot stomping feet(one of my favourite Chemical Brothers songs).

I was actually having fun killing all the pots. Mainly because they didn't fight back. The actual enemies kinda bothered me, but I'll get to that. I played for a while, talkin' 'bou buss'n pots! the whole time. Kelley was verily amused by my running commentary. So much so that he gave me the game when it was time for me to leave. He said I had already gotten more enjoyment out of it than he ever would. Another clever move on Toth's part. He thought that just having me play the accursed game would be punishment, but I managed to enjoy it (in truth just to spite him), so then he played this feigned pleasure against me. I left his place the un-proud new owner of The Scorpion King.

CURSE YOU TOTH!!!!!!!!

So that game sat in the basement, unplayed, for months. It's very presence mocking me. "Look at me," it said, "I suck, and I'm all yours. Your precious collection of stellar titles is ruined by my very presence. I'm waiting for you. I'll be right here, whenever you get the urge."

I ignored the accursed game as long as I could, but finally I broke down and started to play it. Also, I had told Kelley that I would review the game for this site.

CURSE YOU TOTH!!!!!!!!

When I was in Australia, I kind of fell out of the loop video game wise. All the magazines I used to read cost WAY too much money down there. And just going on the internet cost money. Sometimes as much as eight bucks an hour. When you break your back picking pricky vegetables under the hot Australian sun amongst the world's most poisonous snakes and spiders, you become a little more choosey about what you waste your money on. Every once in a great while my lovely and talented fiancee, Carla, would allow me to buy a gamer mag. An Aussie gamer mag. Hyper. That was its name, Hyper.

The point of this rather long and abrupt aside is that they once mentioned this theory about crappy games. Crappy side scrolling games to be precise, but I think that the theorem can be applied to The Scorpion King: Rise of the Akkadian. The theory is this: A game's non-crappiness is directly tied to how long before the first crate/box appears. The quicker you arrive at that first box, the crappier the game. There are no crates in Scorpion King, but that's because they hadn't been invented yet. The game does however contain vases/pots. How long until you get to the first pot? There are multiple pots on the very first screen of the game.

CURSE YOU TOTH!!!!!!!!!!

When you start the game, the first thing you see is a pretty crappy looking intro movie using the in game models. So the poor texture work, lack of polygons, and substandard animation is apparent right from the very start. Then you get to play. The first level is a training level of sorts, explaining what buttons do what. As an added bonus, most of the buttons are inactive until their use has been explained. The jump button does nothing until the game tells you about the jump button.

CURSE YOU TOTH!!!!!!!!!!!!

And sometimes the current 'lesson' deactivates all other actions. So, when being instructed on how to pick up and throw pots, no other buttons do anything. No punching, no kicking, no jumping, just picking up and throwing pots.

CURSE YOU TOTH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The basics of the game are as follows, you start in or enter a screen, a screen that you cannot exit until you have beaten all of the enemies. Once you have beaten all of the enemies, the locked whatever the hell is blocking your path magically unlocks. The enemies like to appear out of thin air. The thin air behind you, usually, to get in some cheap hits. Mathayus doesn't get any brief periods of invincibility after he's been hurt, oh no. If he gets surrounded, his life drains away almost faster than the eye can see. Good times. Luckily, Mathayus has a variety of weapons and combos to use. Unfortunately the combos are very hit and miss. Sometimes because the enemies just seem to ignore the fact that they have just been struck and sometimes because the game seems to ignore the fact that the attack buttons have just been struck. And sometimes Mathayus just gets stuck. It's a very frustrating game, luckily there are countless pots to vent your frustrations on.

And cracks. Scattered throughout the environs are cracks that you must break. The only way to break the cracks on the ground is through your jumping ground pound move. The only way to break the cracks on walls is through... your jumping ground pound move. Way to make sense, guys! Oh yeah, you can also throw pots at cracks. Destroying these cracks nets you icons that incrementally increase your power and endurance. Very incrementally. At the end of the game my power and endurance bars were not even a fifth full. So either the developers were very devious in their placement of these 'hidden cracks' or they meant to go back and add way more. Or the screen that shows how many power ups (and endurance ups) have been found has nothing to do with how many of either have actually been found. I'm leaning towards the latter two theories.

CURSE YOU TOTH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The visual presentation is about on par with the play control. The main character of Mathayus looks kinda like the Rock. Kinda. More like a robot replica of the Rock. That was killed and then brought back to life with voodoo. A zombie robot Rock. He moves with all the grace you would expect of an undead automaton. And Mathayus has about the worst climbing animation I've ever seen. Not climbing as in up a ladder, no, the game would never be able to handle something as complex as that. Climbing on top of things. Mathayus can only climb thing at about waist height or smaller. And when he does, he looks like a freaking two year old. His butt sticks out as he awkwardly clamors onto whatever granite chunk lies in his path. Seriously, how could any animator think that such an animation was a good idea? "Let's make our hero look like he still craps his pants and needs someone to cut his food for him."

And Mathayus received the bulk of the character budget, nothing else looks near as good. Well, maybe some of the bosses. And some of the normal enemies. Hell, all the characters in this game look and animate like ass. At least they blend in well with the environments. As mentioned before, every level is comprised of many smaller 'screens' that you beat in order until you reach the end of the level. Did the developers break each level down this way so they could make every 'screen' so breathtaking as to actually take the player's breath away? Are the backgrounds so dense with visual splendor that the game had to be broken down into smaller bits, lest the game engine chugs by in a framey mess? No. The 'screens' in this game are just like every female midget I've ever seen: small and ugly. Ugly textures slapped onto basic shapes. Oh wait, near the end of the game there are some rooms that contain elaborate machinery. When a nearby switch is thrown, some of the worst looking water ever committed to disk blockily flows(sic) from the ceiling and starts the machinery moving. It turns out the machines don't really DO anything. They're just there to look like shit.

The bosses don't usually look like shit. But fighting them is a shitty time for all involved. They all have very obvious patterns that can be exploited to defeat them. The problem is the bosses take their sweet time. One boss, the minotaur charges at Mathayus. All Mathayus has to do is move out of the way, causing the minotaur to crash into a wall, leaving his backside open to copious slashings and hackings. But sometimes the minotaur doesn't feel like running. He'll just walk around for minutes at a time. Or, sometimes, he will never, ever charge. Bosses will get stuck in their non attackable routines. Thus they become unbeatable.

Toth, you really fucking suck. I can't even curse you man, talking about this game is draining me of my will to live.

Lots of other weird things happen during boss fights. One boss in particular took me multiple, multiple (that second multiple is there on purpose you stupid fucking spell checker, its a stylistic choice) times to beat solely due to the game being filled with more bugs than a week old dead body. This particular boss was a giant snake that liked to slither up the columns in its lair. Mathayus had to attack these columns until they broke. Only then could the snake boss be injured. Various underlings attacked the whole time. One time the columns were impervious to all attacks. Reset. One time the columns were invisible. Reset. One time the boss was invisible. One time Mathayus' head stretched off into the distance and became attached to something out there. Reset. Another time his head just disappeared. Makes me wish I could do screen captures. The boss fights are the hardest part of this game if only because the game fucks up way more often during them than at any other time.

So I eventually beat this god damn game. It took a while because the final boss has two forms, so the game glitched out twice as much. But I persevered. And I beat the game. I sat back and watched a horrible end movie (which, along with the shit opening movie nicely bookended this stinking collection of corn, nuts and fire) followed by the credits. HOLY FUCK! Mark Hamill did voice work for this game. Luke MOTHERFUCKING Skywalker was in this travesty. Billy West supplied some voices as well. Stimpy was in this game. Jesus. That's just sad. Cuz there was nothing special about the sound in this game. The music was blah and the voices were... meh.

But wait, that's not all. Scattered about all the levels are red gems. Collecting these unlocks stuff. Like sketches and promo movies. Like I needed more incentive to play this fantastic game!!!

So this game sucks. It looks like a crap N64 game, plays like a crap piece of crap and... that is it I'm done. DONE! I'm done this review and I'm done with this game. I will always have the game save on my memory card to prove that I beat this mother fucker. And, while there is no stat tracking in the game to prove that I did so, rest assured that I broke every god damn fucking shit pot that got in my way.

- Tyler