Giving mice around the world a bad name.

Every once and awhile a game comes out that redefines what games of its genre should be like. It raises the bar to new heights that every developer should strive for. Sneakers from Media.Vision however is not one of those games. If Sneakers redefines anything it’s what game should never be, in any shape or form.

Features

Mice wearing clothes

5 large stages that you will likely not want to play

Eardrum shattering sound effects in 5.1 Dolby Digital

Full-color graphics

Gameplay
It’s hard to believe what is in Sneakers is actually considered gameplay, but somehow it is. In Sneakers you will play as a group of poorly dressed mice moving around large non-interactive lifeless environments. By moving around that does not mean you will be moving around in a Mario 64 kind of way. Come to think about it, you won’t be moving around in a Super Mario Bros. 1 kind of way either. Your movements instead will all take place on an invisible track where you are allow to move forwards or backwards on a straight line, that’s it. You will be able to move in other directions, but only when you reach a crossroads where your mice will stop and you will be given a choice of two to three directions and press the A button to go that way. Sounds like fun, right? No it does not in the slightest bit.

Your goal in the game, yes there actually is one, is to hunt down and destroy rats. Mice and rats travel around in street gangs and hate each other anyway, so it’s all very realistic. Now don’t worry when I say hunt, because you really won’t have to look hard to find the rats at all. Actually, as long as you are not blind you will be able to clearly see the rats. The rats do not hide at all instead they just stand there in complete view of the mice. When you spot a rat don’t concern yourself with trying to be stealthy or sneaking up on them, as you could be standing eye to eye and they will not react, or even move. Once you spot a rat you need to look at them using your binoculars and press the A button. When you do that, the rat will spring to life with a jump and then magically disappear with a little smoke. Yes, it’s really that easy and that ridiculous.


Looking at this screen is more entertaining than the game

If you were afraid that finding rats was the extent of the gameplay, don’t worry, you get to participate in mice vs. rats street brawls. In these fights you will be able to move around with full-3D movement, but in a very restricted space and with very sloppy handling. The object of these fights is to beat the crap out of the rats to destroy them and collect food. While these fights are not bloody, they do actually come off a bit shocking as they resemble a gangland street brawl, or when a rat cowers in fear as it is beating to death by the pack of mice, the “gang” beating-to-death beach scene in Lord of the Flies.

All of this fun excitement will be accomplished during a set time limit, but don’t feel too rushed. Every time you find a rat you will be rewarded with more time. The problem with this time system lies in that you will usually get down to about one rat left to find and have no clue as to where it could be. You then spend the remainder of your time looking for it only to not find it and instead be presented with a Game Over screen and be forced to find all 30 rats again. How fun is that? That’s right, it’s not fun. Nothing in this game resembles fun in any shape or form to anyone in any country on this planet.

Graphics
The graphical highlight in Sneakers is the fur-shading on the mice. Up until the point they were given clothing, awkward and unrealistic animations, and made to walk on two feet they would have looked pretty realistic. The environments look dull and are completely void of life, but then they are nothing more then static backgrounds. Occasionally you will be shown an item that can be interacted with, but they are as dull and poorly designed as the environments they are placed in. Given the fact the environments are like this it is baffling that the framerate will often drop to slideshow-like speeds.

Sound
God good, turn off the speakers! First, let’s talk about the music in the game. After about say two minutes you will either be driven insane or go suddenly deaf. The music is that awful, accept a couple pieces of music which sound like really, really bad attempts at ripping off the Super Mario Bros. musical score. Let’s move onto the second topic, the sound effects. The handful of sound effects in the game is as dull and unimpressive as the rest of the game. Third and final the “voice work”, if you can call it that, will make you want to either kill someone or if you are alone, kill yourself. The mice “speak” in a series of high-pitched, eardrum shattering squeaks with for some reason their names actually being said in recognizable English when speaking to each other. It’s really just all horrible and you are best off just not even turning the speakers on and experiencing it in its 5.1 Dolby Digital glory.

Closing
If you have reached this point in the review and you have still not made up your mind as to whether or not you should buy this “game,” this is your final warning. DO NOT PURCHASE or RENT this waste of a perfectly good DVD disc. If you should find yourself in possession of this “game,” then congratulations, you are now the owner of fine new coaster.