Too often, games tend to take themselves too seriously. With all the violence and high-tension situations that the majority of video games lately regard as their bread and butter, it’s always nice when a game comes along that refuses to take itself too seriously. When done well, a game’s sense of humor can make a good game into a spectacular one, as has been demonstrated by the Jak and Daxter series, as well as the Ratchet and Clank series. That said, a game about two adorable critters, chained together, attempting to escape from an evil corporation while trying to do as much property damage as possible, caught my eye. After all, at least if the gameplay wouldn’t be that good, the game could still keep me entertained nonetheless, right?
That simple thought was what began my encounter with Whiplash. The game revolves around Spanx the weasel and Redmond the bunny, who have been chained together in preparation for their trip into a recombination machine which intends to turn them into some sort of bunny/weasel mutant creature. The two manage to escape that unpleasant fate and, with the help of a cast of assistants, make it their business to escape from the clutches of the evil Genron corporation, while destroying every piece of equipment that might be worth anything that they encounter.
To this end, it quickly becomes apparent that Redmond has been rendered invulnerable as a result of previous bouts of testing, so Redmond immediately becomes Spanx’s weapon of choice. Redmond can be used as a war mace (which can be combined with various elements, like fire, ice, and toxic sludge for different degrees of damage), helium balloon, grappling hook, and propeller, just to name a few. The system is actually fairly entertaining as Spanx learns more and more uses for his invincible bunny friend.
The game itself is a pretty standard platform game; there are a number of rooms that Spark and Redmond must traverse in order to escape from Genron, and much jumping, scurrying, swinging, and gliding ensues. One interesting twist is that Genron’s net worth is displayed on the bottom of the screen; you can make that number dwindle from several million to zero by smashing everything in your path. I must admit that it’s strangely satisfying to watch the huge number slowly decrease as the game progresses, as much as it is to cause random property damage. In fact, the whole game is extremely entertaining for the first few hours, as the pair smash up lots of stuff, free animals in droves, and keep the plot moving with lots of wisecracks and (occasionally twisted) jokes to keep the player engrossed.
Then, a few hours in, something strange happens. All of a sudden, this fun, light-hearted platformer turns into the pinnacle of tedium and frustration. The real problem is that the game relies much more on its humor than on gameplay, and once the veneer of the game’s quirkiness wears off, you realize that the gameplay just isn’t there.
One big problem with Whiplash is that it is artificially lengthened in just about every way possible. Vague goals, as well as challenges that require a lot of backtracking after unsuccessful attempts certainly contribute to the problem. However, the worst offender by far is the inclusion of endless hallways that connect the different areas. Basically, moving from one area to another requires going through these hallways that take several minutes, and require performing the same action over and over again, be it scurrying across a power line, avoiding security lasers, or beating up on security personnel. The worst hallway obstacle I encountered, to add insult to injury, was a blast of flame that stopped for about five seconds out of every thirty. As a result, not only did I get to waste an inordinate amount of time in the hallway, but I got to experience the video game approximation of waiting for a traffic light to turn green. That’s a great design decision right there.
Combat is equally repetitive. Sure, you can get all kinds of fancy combos and what not, but when all you really need to do is pound on square or circle repeatedly until the enemy lets his/her guard down, or wait for him/her to start attacking and then commence pounding on the attack button, you really don’t need combos. Aside from maybe some boss battles, there was not one enemy that I encountered that couldn’t be beaten in this manner. Also, since human enemies never die (unless you use a frozen Redmond to attack them), they’ll awaken after a period of time and you get to go through the tedium of battle all over again, in yet another blatant move to artificially lengthen the game.
The puzzles also aren’t all that engaging. Often, if you’re spending a lot of time in a given room, you’re just looking in the wrong place. (As an example, I spent a good half hour trying to scurry on top of a cable that I was instead to use as a zip line, and wondered why I kept falling repeatedly to my death.) Most puzzles are solved by simply pressing a button, and the ones that are more complicated are often pretty obvious once you get to where you’re supposed to be. As a result, the actual rooms where you actually get to do some platforming are almost anti-climactic. By the time you’ve traversed the hallways and beaten up on all the enemies, once you figure out where you’re supposed to be, there isn’t all that much left to do.
The control is decent, but fairly touch and go at points. Standard platforming rules apply, with the requisite jumping, double-jumping, and gliding (accomplished by spinning Redmond around as a propeller) controlled by multiple presses of the X button. Attacking is fairly straightforward and easy to do, especially if you skip the combos and get straight to the point. It should be said that you can use triangle near an enemy to enter a combat mode, where you lock on to and then strafe around him/her, but it’s rarely, if ever, necessary, and the time that it takes to press triangle is often just enough for the enemy to smack you around. Overall, controlling the two critters is fairly easy to pick up and never really feels awkward.
Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for the camera. Camera control is spastic at best, occasionally giving you a lovely close-up view of Redmond and Spanx when you’d want to see pretty much anything else. Occasionally, the pair go off-screen altogether, which can be deadly. It’s much more difficult to see what you want to than it should be, and there’s really no excuse for that in a day and age where games with excellent camera control are becoming the norm rather than the exception.
Graphically, Whiplash could use some work as well. While the main characters are animated well, and amusingly so, the rest of the character models are fairly uninspired. In fact, you’ll fight the same handful of enemy types over and over again, without even a palette swap to differentiate them from one another. The framerate occasionally has some real difficulty staying at a steady rate, and clipping issues abound. In fact, the clipping was so bad at one point that a downed enemy was actually lying on the ground with the railing running through him. Downed enemies also have the disturbing tendency to lie down in mid-air, which completely kills the suspension of disbelief. The game doesn’t necessarily look bad, per se, but there is a lot of repetition and the glitches make the game’s visuals just seem sloppy.
Sound is slightly better. Background music is non-offensive, but not particularly engaging, and consists mostly of the same keyboard tune with a couple of variations throughout the game, which does add a bit of consistency but also gets boring after a while. The voice acting is fairly well done, if somewhat repetitive. Redmond’s lines, in particular, are delivered with just the right timing to elicit laughter. An option for subtitles, which has been standard in most games of the current generation, would have been nice, but very little of the dialogue is necessary to hear in order to determine where to go next.
I had high hopes for Whiplash, despite the fact that it really didn’t have anything beyond its interesting premise to intrigue me. At the end of the day, the interesting premise is really all that Whiplash has to offer. The gameplay is tedious and repetitive, the graphics are sloppy, and the story isn’t entertaining enough to allow the player to look beyond the game’s flaws. If Whiplash’s premise looks interesting to you, by all means rent it, and then return it as soon as it stops being fun, which will be well before the game is due back to the store. Aside from that (or perhaps as an expensive gag gift for that special member of PETA in your life), avoid Whiplash at all costs.
Note: No animals were harmed during the making of this review. Only the reviewer was.
