Men's Room Mayhem came out just this week for a mere 97 cents (for Plus members, or at least, that's how much I paid according to my receipt) and I, being eternally irresponsible with money, decided it was worth it to give it a try on concept alone. "This sound suspiciously like a cell phone game", I told myself. "But then again, so is Jetpack Joyride and I rather enjoy that." I was still a little wary, but the pricing and the fact that it is, in a sense, a simulation/management game made the choice all-too-clear. As part of a completely irresponsible PSN shopping spree in which I picked up this, REVENGEANCE's DLC, Discounted Sleeping Dogs story DLC and Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon, none of which I'm actually sure I can download, or at least feasibly so, I picked this game up.
The wariness....was somewhat warranted, though to what degree, I'm not quite certain.
As discerned, Men's Room Mayhem has a very 'Cell Phone' feel about it in that it's meant, literally, to take mere minutes of your free time when it is scarce, rather than ask for your time while it is plentiful as most other games. Your play options are Normal and Blitz - the former is a more nuanced approach to understanding the game's mechanics, where the latter is putting those to the test to make the most of chaos - and that's roughly it. There's no real depth to it, much like Jetpack Joyride, relying on repetition with random-generation to make a new game experience for each play, and that sort of gaming is an acquired taste, I should say. The gameplay is basically waiting as people enter the restroom and directing them to the facility they require. A yellow droplet means urinal where toilet paper means the proper toilet stall. For extra points, keep a space between occupied urinals and make sure to direct everyone to the sinks before directing them out the door while making sure that no one person touches another at any point because it will cause a fight and six of those in a round (which happens surprisingly easily eventually) means game over.
Another way in which it alludes itself to Jetpack Joyride is with the 'medal' system, in which you have up to three tasks at a time to perform through your playthroughs of the levels. Completing the challenges unlocks those medals for you, bringing you that much closer to the next rank, but they're only marked as complete when you finish (read: lose) the level you're currently playing. Mind, there's no way to 'win' Men's Room Mayhem, I don't believe, you simply play to see how far, how high you can get in its hierarchy before it catches up with you. Where Men's Room Mayhem gets it wrong is that these challenges start off -far- too easy to complete, in that you'll complete them after a few waves....and the game doesn't get challenging (and barely even then) by wave six. So you have a choice of either taking a dive to get more challenges (since Bronze to Silver takes -25-) or ride it out to see just how far you actually can get. Which purely depends on what you're trying to get out of the game, really.
Unfortunately, what I want out of the game is its delicious trophies. From what I can tell, they're not too terribly difficult to obtain, and if I get them, I can safely delete the game without looking back. I have two levels unlocked, but I believe I have experienced what the game itself has to offer and I'm not particularly interested in it. If I want a pick-up-and-go game in that vein, I still have Jetpack Joyride and Plants vs. Zombies, both of which offer a more stable experience as it ramps up. Men's Room Mayhem has no concept of a difficulty curve in that it will slow-feed you one patron at a time and then in the very next wave, you'll have them entering one after another, making fights easy to break out while you're trying to instruct everyone to proper stalls for Etiquette bonuses and the rest of everyone to the sinks to wash their hands and then out the exit. All of it becomes incredibly difficult in short order purely because the amount of characters that will simply be milling about the screen is ridiculous when you have to be mindful of the routes of everyone at once.
Still, it's a dollar and it's perhaps your cup of tea even if it's not mine. There's something in it that makes me want to like it, which again might just be the silly concept, but I'm not sure. It certainly can be strategic if you're a bit more focused on controlling the chaos it becomes, which is clearly the goal, but I can't bring myself to actually care as much as it wants me to. It is trying something, however, and it's not a bad game by any means, simply a small one that reinforces the idea that you do, indeed, get what you pay for. I'm not expecting hours upon hours of content from it, nor should I, but what I will get from it will be fun enough, and then we'll be through and that will be that. And I will be able to say that I played a game where I directed people to take a wee that wasn't a Sims game.
do I need to put something here? It's a game about pissing
No comments:
Post a Comment