Whacked!

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Whacked!
WhackedXbox.jpg
Developer(s) Presto Studios
Publisher(s) Microsoft Game Studios
Designer(s) Phil Saunders (Lead)
Composer(s) Jamey Scott
Engine Sprint Engine
Platform(s) Xbox
Release
  • NA: October 15, 2002 [1]
  • EU: November 29, 2002
  • JP: January 16, 2003
Genre(s) Party
Mode(s) Single-player, multiplayer

Whacked! is a party game developed by Presto Studios and released in 2002 by Microsoft Game Studios exclusively for the Xbox. It was one of the two original games to be made available for Xbox Live, and it received mixed reviews. Whacked! was the last game developed by Presto Studios before it went defunct.

Contents

Gameplay

Whacked! is played as a series of arena style mini-games. The player competes with three other players, human or artificial intelligence, to complete a specific objective, and players can use a variety of weapons and power-ups to affect the game. Possible objectives include collecting stars for points, deathmatch, king of the hill, holding a trophy to earn points, and elimination style dodgeball. Single player has the addition gamemode of chicken, in which many flesh-eating chickens pursue the player, and the player has to destroy them first.

Arenas include the site of a car crash, the ceiling of a bathroom, a plaza, the space underneath a Christmas Tree, an oil pipeline, a heavily fortified front yard, a space station, a toy pirate ship in an electrified bathtub, an arena with spiked walls, the tops of skyscrapers, the back of a pickup truck during a police chase, and a kitchen sink. Hell is unlocked after completing the game.

Game show mode is the main single-player story mode, in which the player chooses one of three doors to determine the gamemode and arena. Each set of three doors makes up one stage, and each of the four stages becomes successively more difficult and the matches become longer. Battle mode allows players to play against one another and choose all of the settings the mini-game. As of the game's release, battle mode could be played through split screen, system link, or Xbox Live.

Story

Whacked! takes place on the set of a game show in which seven contestants compete for The Prize, which will be anything in the world that the contestant desires. To win The Prize, the contestants compete across four stages of violent battles and competitions. While the contestants compete, Van Tastic speaks to his boss over the phone, reassuring him that it's impossible to win and that there is no prize. After the player's character wins the game, Van Tastic's boss calls him again and cancels the show. Van Tastic challenges the winner to a final competition for an even better grand prize. After the contestant agrees, Van Tastic destroys the set, revealing it to be Hell. He burns the other contestants to death, and reveals himself to be a demon. After the winner defeats Van Tastic, his boss calls him to renew the show.

Characters

There are seven playable contestants, each based on one of the seven deadly sins, as well as a host that becomes playable after completing the game. [2]

Development

The concept for Whacked! was first conceived in the mid-1990s as a casual multiplayer game to compete against Mario Kart 64 , with a similar low barrier to entry and mechanisms to rubber band players between first and last place. During development, testers would regularly test different variations of each in-game element individually before allowing the art team to give it a design. It was also tested without artificial intelligence to prioritize the multiplayer experience and players to adjust to changes in real time without updates to AI. Development was held to a strict schedule, allowing the game to ship three weeks early. Whacked! was originally designed as a PC game, but the game was eventually ported to the Xbox. Development was complicated by two of the three creative designers leaving half way through the project. [2]

Whacked! was one of the two games distributed to beta testers for the initial rollout of Xbox Live on the Xbox. The same Live enabled demos were originally given out for one year with the purchase of the Xbox Live starter kit. [3] As of 2010, Xbox Live for the original Xbox was discontinued, ending support for online play of all Xbox titles, including Whacked!.

Whacked! was the final project released by Presto Studios before it went out of business in 2002. [4] Whacked! is backward compatible on the Xbox 360, albeit with some glitches, including graphics not loading properly or loading screens not displaying.[ citation needed ]

Reception

The game was met with average to mixed reception upon release, as GameRankings gave it a score of 67.28%, [5] while Metacritic gave it 59 out of 100. [6] Critic Jeff Gerstmann praised the game's style and voice acting, but criticized the gameplay and soundtrack, saying that "The single-player mode is plain and simple, and the multiplayer mode, once you get over the novelty of shooting people over the Internet, really lacks depth." [17] Hilary Goldstein of IGN criticizes the drawn-out gameplay and the inconsistency of the gameshow dynamic. [18]

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References

  1. ↑ "Microsoft ships Whacked!". GameSpot. Retrieved 2023-03-13.
  2. 1 2 Saladino, Michael (2002-11-15). "Postmortem: Presto's Whacked!". Game Developer. Retrieved 2022-03-29.
  3. ↑ Parker, Sam (September 25, 2002). "Xbox Live starter kit games confirmed". GameSpot . Retrieved February 25, 2015.
  4. ↑ Cohen, Peter (September 2, 2002). "Game maker Presto Studios closes doors". Macworld. Retrieved 2022-03-29.
  5. 1 2 "Whacked! for Xbox". GameRankings . Retrieved February 25, 2015.
  6. 1 2 "Whacked! for Xbox Reviews". Metacritic . Retrieved February 25, 2015.
  7. ↑ Marriott, Scott Alan. "Whacked! - Review". Allgame . Archived from the original on November 15, 2014. Retrieved February 25, 2015.
  8. ↑ Bramwell, Tom (January 22, 2003). "Whacked!". Eurogamer . Retrieved February 25, 2015.
  9. ↑ McNamara, Andy (December 2002). "Whacked!". Game Informer . No. 116. p. 144. Archived from the original on April 29, 2004. Retrieved February 25, 2015.
  10. ↑ Gerstmann, Jeff (October 18, 2002). "Whacked! Review". GameSpot. Retrieved February 25, 2015.
  11. ↑ Williams, Bryn (October 19, 2002). "GameSpy: Whacked!". GameSpy . Archived from the original on December 18, 2005. Retrieved February 25, 2015.
  12. ↑ Zacarias, Eduardo (October 19, 2002). "Whacked! - XB - Review". GameZone. Archived from the original on January 17, 2008. Retrieved February 25, 2015.
  13. ↑ Goldstein, Hilary (October 17, 2002). "Whacked! Review". IGN . Retrieved February 25, 2015.
  14. ↑ "Whacked!". Official Xbox Magazine . January 2003. p. 90.
  15. ↑ Semsey, Rob (October 30, 2002). "Whacked! Review (Xbox)". TeamXbox . Archived from the original on September 28, 2011. Retrieved February 25, 2015.
  16. ↑ Bub, Andrew (December 9, 2002). "'Whacked' (Xbox) Review". X-Play . Archived from the original on December 19, 2002. Retrieved February 25, 2015.
  17. ↑ Gerstmann, Jeff (October 18, 2002). "Whacked! Review". GameSpot. Retrieved 2022-03-29.
  18. ↑ Goldstein, Hilary (2002-10-17). "Whacked! Review". IGN. Retrieved 2022-03-29.
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