KUSOGE: THAT MEANS “SHITTY GAME” IN JAPANESE.
This game is not remotely charming.
Before I can dive into this game however, I need to take us all the way back to Japan in 1986. Comedian Beat Takeshi played the role of Count Takeshi in the TV game show Takeshi’s Castle, in which over 100 contestants would run an obstacle course to hopefully face down and challenge Takeshi head to head. The mix of comedic commentary and slapstick nature of contestants hurting themselves was a hit, and saw the show run until 1990. In that time there were eight winners and the prize was the equivalent of $5000. Surprisingly the show was a cult hit worldwide because watching people get hurt is universally funny.
Jump cut to the United States in 2003 where Spike TV repurposed old Takeshi’s Castle footage as MXC: Most Extreme Elimination Challenge. The writers added their own new English dialog overtop that is comedic and adds plot details the original game show never had. MXC ran until 2007.
PLATFORMS: XB1, PS4, SWITCH, PC, MAC
PRICE: $14.99
PRICE I’D PAY: YEARS OFF MY LIFE
One year later in 2008, the Disney affiliated network ABC introduced the show Wipeout which billed itself as “the world’s largest obstacle course.” Anyone familiar with either Takeshi’s Castle or it’s parody MXC clearly recognized the formula as blatantly wearing the clothes of Takeshi’s Castle from two decades earlier, but Wipeout went on to have 40 different versions for other countries. This formula of watching people get hurt just works.
So when I found out that there was going to be a game that worked off this premise I was actually excited.
Until I played it.
Before I start tearing into the gameplay, make note that I just showed that the concept of horribly difficult obstacle courses has worldwide appeal. For some reason the UK based developer Onion Soup Interactive felt it necessary for their game to take place in Japan and feature Japanese voice acting. This decision comes off as pandering towards fans of the most fan service filled anime and manga. It seems to follow the trope of Japan being wacky, which is tiring because Japan is more than that. A contestant who has the head of a dog is weird in any setting, but it’s clear that the idea was that this was to feel inherently Japanese. The same with the girl wearing a unicorn costume when actually she’s suppose to be a narwhal. It doesn’t help that narration during gameplay is the stereotypical Japanese man speaking English accent, which was surprising to say the least. It was unnecessary to set this game with its bizarre sense of humor in Japan and totally misses the point of what made Takeshi’s Castle and all the works it inspired funny and enjoyable in the first place.
Now I realize that comes off as me yelling from a soapbox about the purity of slapstick comedy, but had I not been forced to sit through the awful anime-like story the developers want to push for each character then maybe I wouldn’t have gotten up on the soapbox in the first place. The stories are bad, the character models look awful to downright scary close up, scenery looks like bought assets mixed with original models made in house, and the character portraits range from actually pretty good to bad. Voice acting (in Japanese of course) pops in to deliver a line or two and covers the gamut of deep Japanese man voice to shrill cutesy voice. There is no skip button, so before I could play any of the game I sat through about 10 minutes of just awful writing. There was no option to just jump into the game.
When I got to the gameplay, it was awful. Nippon Marathon controls poorly, which would be fine if the game was trying to be one of those weird physics games like Goat Simulator, but this is supposed to be a race. When I hit jump and my character sort of slumps over because he touched the edge of the hurdle, that’s not fun. This type of weird physics constantly happens, putting me behind in the race. Maybe had I got some actual tutorials I would understand this better, but the developers’ answer to a tutorial is a slideshow. The camera moves automatically and it’s hard to keep track of my character. I have no idea what items do until I use them. Why did I trip and fall? Too bad, I lost some fans for being terrible.
At one point the other contestants and I lined up to take the next stretch of the race (this happens every time all the runners fall over) and bikes ran me over immediately. Had this game not already been difficult to enjoy I might have laughed, but this just felt like another case where the game was trying to test my patience.
There are some concepts that I thought were interesting. At one point the race stopped for myself and the other contestants to answer questions using weirdly obtuse answers and those answers would help win fans over. It has a bit of that Mario Party randomness that can be appealing.
Nippon Marathon in theory is a good idea, but when it came to actually playing the game I did not enjoy myself and I really wanted to. Maybe there’s fun to be had if played with friends but I was so put off myself that I wouldn’t force any friends to play it.
Review copy of game provided by publisher.
