Call the movers. Review

Call the movers.

Despite Ben’s professed love for weird games,

it’s pretty clear to me that any time a weird game comes down the chutes at Game

Revolution, there’s already someone’s name on it: Mine. Somehow, I’ve become the

resident “Quirky Game” reviewer. I don’t really mind. After all, someone has to

review them. With games like Animal

Crossing, Incredible Crisis

and Disaster Report, straying from the beaten

path can be fun.

But it isn’t always great to be quirky. Case in point: My Street, which

plops you into a little suburban neighborhood and lets you play with other kids

in a collection of mini-games. It’s like Tom Sawyer mixed with Children

of the Corn, but far less amusing than either.

To

join in on the shenanigans, you must create your own pint-sized counterpart.

There are many different character options as well as a random character generator,

which seems to continuously give birth to some strange and ugly kids.

Once you’ve joined the neighborhood, you can take part in one of the seven

mini-games. Yep, only seven, compared to like 75 in the Mario

Party games. There was clearly a ton of thought put into this.

My favorite of the lot – and I mean that very, very loosely – is ‘Chicken Herding’,

a blatant rip-off of Chu

Chu Rocket, except with chickens and pigs. The goal is to direct the hens

and chicks into your chicken coop and divert the stinky pigs away towards your

enemies. It can be fun, but then again, it’s Chu-Chu Rocket.

‘Dodge Ball’ is another decent mini-game. It’s the classic game from grade

school P.E. where a rubber ball is flung back and forth as you try to bean the

sissy kid that picks his nose. The controls can be a little stiff, but it can

be fun, if only because you get to brain kids in the head.

Beyond these two mini-games, My Street takes a sharp turn for the worse.

The ‘Marbles’ mini-game isn’t at all like the real thing. You control one big

marble with magnetic powers and attempt to steer smaller marbles towards the

goal. Your opponents will be trying to do the same thing; a well-timed bop will

send them over the edge. The game is quickly forgettable.

The ‘Lawn Mower’ racing game is similar to the old-school arcade game Off-Road,

where the entire track is seen from an overhead view. Also included is ‘RC Cars’,

which uses the same overhead perspective, albeit with slightly different but

equally irritating control. Since the PS2 does have dual stick controls, they

should have implemented real RC style control.

My Street‘s ‘Volleyball’ game uses three buttons to facilitate the

bump, set and spike; Beach

Spikers and DOA

Xtreme Volleyball use two buttons in more of a context sensitive capacity.

My Street also utilizes indicators on the ground to mark where the ball

will land. The different buttons used to return the ball must be hit at very

precisely or the shot will be flubbed. It’s unforgiving and touchy, especially

when you try to spike, and it’s just not much fun.

Also included is ‘Chemistry’, perhaps the worst puzzle game ever. It’s like

a combination of several different puzzle games, but without any logical basis

to hold everything together. There’s no “chemistry” in this game; rather, you

drop blocks. While you’ll find combinations as in Puyo Puyo and larger

block creation like Puzzle Fighter, you must wait until a ‘laser meter’

is built up before you can destroy any blocks. Your blocks will be turned into

unusable silver if an opponent manages to do some combinations first. It’s poorly

designed and just doesn’t make any sense. No fun to be had here.

The

single-player Story mode takes you on a whirlwind, linear tour throughout the

different mini-games. At first you can only play one game, but when you beat

it, you get an item that opens up the next game and so on. At one point, you

must perform insanely boring chores for nearly a week just to buy a RC racecar.

My Street is just not a good single-player game.

Part of the problem is that it doesn’t effectively link the different games

together into one experience. How about having your own room to decorate and

chill in with the friends you’ve “made?” What about a store that sells items

besides the generic props needed to get to the next mini-game? And why even

bother with the Story mode when you can play all of the games right off the

bat in the normal single-game mode?

Chicken Herding and Dodge Ball are fun to play with friends, but otherwise,

the multiplayer outlook is rather gloomy. After repeated attempts, I was never

able to connect to an online server. Besides, an online experience can only

make a good game better; not much can be done when the games themselves are

already lousy. My Street does not support voice communication via the

SOCOM headset nor does the game support

a USB keyboard, so players must make do with a laborious text entry device.

The visuals are merely average, with some bright, cheery environmental designs

but unmistakably ugly children. The dialogue is painfully lame. My Street

tries too hard to be hip and trendy and instead winds up sounding like a canned

advertisement for Extreme Fruit Roll-Ups or something.

My Street might have had some potential, but 7 weak mini-games do not

make for a good game. With only 2 out of the 7 warranting continual play, I’d

say that’s a pretty pathetic batting average. If you move into My Street,

you’ll probably move out later that day.