"A Big Pot Full Of Bum": GNamer Forum Cr@p Game Reviews Thread

The shot's slightly low resolution, but that's okay: so's the game.  And so, amusingly, is the banner image on the game's eShop page.  All very apropos.

This is a joke game that has two jokes.  One: 'LOL Japan is so KERAAAAYZEEEE'.  Two: 'LOL random LOL'.  The first joke feels like it borders on the racist at times, especially with the transparently non-Japanese announcer doing his worst Japanese accent.  'I cannot berieve this is happening!'  'Snuguru Maestro has been hit on the head!  Do not try this at hoooooome.'  It's all very Banzai, if you remember that.  I checked up where the developer, Onion Soup Interactive, is based - it turns out they're a British company, and if you're being kind you could call this an affectionate parody of how the outside world views Japan.  The announcer, though, feels bad.  It elicited the sort of non-giggle I gave when my grandma said she was a 'big Boris fan' this Christmas and I know they're old and I had to spend another two hours in their company.

As for joke two...  Let me take you through The Lady's and my playthrough of (part of) the titular Nippon Marathon.  First you have to choose a character.



Squarely fitting into the bounds of both jokes.  I opted for Elizabeth (you can imagine it's not pronounced that way) Nishibori, a 'narwhal enthusiast' and professional onesie-wearer.  That left The Lady as Snuguru (Snuggle?) Maestro the humanoid dog, which the game's page tells me is a 'wannabe dating-agency owner'.  Incidentally I'm toying with the idea of referring to her as such from now on, to see if I can incite her to violence.  

The anime art's in the eShop link above, and features in the menus and the cut-scenes; but this is who you see in-game.  I think the game's trying to trade off 'janky charm' regarding its character art, and also most of the visuals.  The trouble is that to have janky charm, you need to be charming.

Onto playing the game.  The basis of the gameplay is to run through the obstacle course, avoiding such KERAAAAYZEEEE obstacles as oil drums, pedestrians, market stalls, temple-sweeping monks, and macaques in the snowy areas that (sadly) we didn't reach, faster than your three opponents.  Do this for long enough and you get a star, which translates into points at the end of the course; and then the next segment begins, until one of you crosses the course's finishing line.  There are power-ups along the way, mostly fruit; but they seemed to be as likely to be power-downs, so I largely ended up avoiding them and still did all right.  The most common obstacle, though, is shiba inu.  Yep!  The game is trading so heavily off the 'shibe' meme that I'm surprised it didn't pop up in Comic Sans.  The bastards cover most of the running track, and appear at least three times per course.  You run into them, they bite you, the announcer goes wild, and it's funny for all of about... actually sorry, it wasn't funny.  



Oh yes.  Every so often, the 'race' will be interrupted by a quiz segment, or an anime doctor with his shirt open ushering you through a maze.  Doing this correctly gains you points.  The CPU, incidentally, knew exactly the right route through the maze; and the quiz, again, trades heavily off 'LOL random LOL' regarding your answers, and the points you get for them.

The racing is not fun.  Some of the wacky obstacles may get a small laugh, like pratfalling over a barrel, but they get thrown at you repeatedly and the joke doesn't change.  It's like me telling you the same bad pun every week for five years and expecting you to laugh - this, incidentally, is the approach taken by the least popular of Snuguru's D&D group.  The route itself seemed to go on for about half an hour, as we all pratfalled and got attacked by shiba inu until our sides split.  Every so often the game refrained from telling us in which direction we were meant to be going, presumably for a laugh.  Sudden right angle off the road hrough a temple!  What, you didn't realise?  Too bad, the CPU did and you 'ruze a sta'.  That said, by our second race (through cherry blossoms that would have been picturesque rendered in possibly any other game), Snuguru and I were topping the charts consistently: the CPU, it seems, had become keener on participating in the game's joke than in winning.  

I mention the CPU, and that's clearly not the point of this game: it's a party game, and you probably are laughing more when there's four of you drowning out the announcer.  The worst jokes can become funny with friends and alcohol, and in the hands of less cynical people than us.  However, there's also a story mode for each character.  While it's nice that it's there should you want to find out more about how Zenbei 'XEN BAE' the Japanese schoolgirl got trapped in an old man's body, I can't help feeling that without any human interaction this would be an unfun game at its least fun.  The exception is probably if you stream it online: I imagine at least one PewDiePie wannabe has recorded himself going 'OH MY GOD YOU GUYZ THIS GAME IS SO FUNNY I GOT MAULED BY SHIBES MUCH RANDOM LOL please like and subscribe.'

Snuguru summed it up neatly: 'It seems like the sort of game that was hoping to build a cult following, and didn't.'