Crazy Frog Racer 2

Review - Don't touch, he's poisonous

This whole videogame reviewing gig is rarely the cushy and glamorous lifestyle that some envious folk may well believe it to be, and the whole pragmatic 'rough with the smooth' adage usually weighs more in the favour of 'rough' than 'smooth'. However, having to touch your journalistic toes and take one for the team is something every reviewer expects and - in some cases - fears. So, bearing that compromising image in mind, without further ado let's see if Neko Entertainment's Crazy Frog Racer 2 emerges as cutting the sequel mustard or the gaming cheese.

The original Crazy Frog Racer racked up fairly pitiful reviews, with Metacritic scores perilously hovering around the 30-40% mark, and the Crazy Frog himself is a franchise extension of quite possibly the most infuriatingly banal and shamelessly unrelenting cell phone ring tone campaign ever conceived. And peering in dread at his wonky bug eyes and sprawling toothy grin on the PlayStation 2 box is something that only further fuels negative preconceptions before actually braving the game proper.

But it's perhaps unfair to label Crazy Frog Racer 2 as a hollow money-wringing dud before investing the time required to assess its pluses and minuses. Indeed, perhaps it's actually a videogame diamond in the ring tone rough, a surprisingly impressive standalone racing title that exceeds expectations and delivers a thoroughly satisfying experience to deservedly rank alongside the likes of Wipeout and Mario Kart.

Okay, okay, please accept my humble apologies, as any more misleading build up is only going to lead to intense disappointment for those gamers shallow enough to willingly hand over pocket money for this latest incarnation of utter tripe. Crazy Frog Racer 2's only point of wonder exists in how on God's good Earth it was ever green-lit for development - though, that said, it's likely the answer to such a ponderous question lies with the very people that constantly send Crazy Frog's musical adaptation's to the top of the pop charts and keep him as MTV's biggest (unwanted) commercial icon.

In terms of content, Crazy Frog Racer 2 offers up a single-player component that delivers a selection of separate game modes, those being: Championship, Single Race, Chase Race, and Time Trials. Championship exists as the scant meat on the game's bones, and its 12 (yes, just 12) uninspiring tracks are split across 4 equally as dull environmental styles. Single Race, Chase Race, and Time Trials are self-explanatory and run through the same tracks on offer in Championship. Multiplayer options are limited to a two-player Battle mode, which sees players facing off until one of the other runs out of lives. Yes, it's all as unfulfilling as it sounds.

Aesthetically speaking, Crazy Frog Racer 2 looks marginally better than a mediocre first-generation PSOne game, and as a twilight PlayStation 2 title it's somewhat disgraceful that it pales beside the likes of the aforementioned Wipeout, which was first released on Sony's original grey box of power back in 1995. While framerates are passable, the track design is cramped and awkward, the 12 available character sprites are all unappealing, atmospheric effects are at a bare minimum, colours are unrelentingly gaudy, detailing is poor, and variety is all-but non-existent. Unsurprisingly, the game's sound and music are as ear shatteringly offensive as the graphics are insipidly ineffectual. Naturally, given the history of the franchise, players hurtle around the game's tracks to Crazy Frog's mind-numbing electronic interpretations of Harold Faltermeyer's 'Axel F' and Right Said Fred's 'I'm Too Sexy', and many, many others. Characters contribute to the aural assault with a cacophony of grunts, squeals, and screams, which pepper jumps, drops, falls, and attacks from chasing racers (sadly they're not fatal).

Gameplay is largely a poor copycat representation of what Mario Kart would have looked like if all Nintendo's iconic characters had been floating - without their karts - and had been forced to navigate truly terrible content. Each track is littered with bonuses and useful power-ups (defensive and offensive), which can be picked up and used against the A.I. racers; and, to be fair, there's a half decent selection on offer including toxic clouds, missiles, spike traps, and mortars, along with protective drones, speed boosts, and shields. Sadly though, despite the power-ups and armour bonuses, the actual flow of gameplay lacks any form of smooth execution thanks to tracks that twist and turn far too quickly, far too steeply, and far too often, sending the player slamming into side walls and stripping any form of fluidity and fun from the experience.

Beyond the attraction (hohoho) held by the game's skinny single-player element and its positively anorexic multiplayer, Crazy Frog Racer 2 also offers 'fans' the chance to 'enjoy' the Axel F and Popcorn music videos, which, while annoying musically and obviously rendered, are still head and shoulders above the game in terms of visual production quality. Then there are two self-contained Crazy Frog mini-games: Crazy Dance and Crazy Pinball. In keeping with the rest of the game's performance, both of these extras amount to banal padding that fail to register on all counts. Crazy Pinball, set across a selection of isometric tables, sends a controllable spinning disc against a horde of recycling robotic drones, whereas Crazy Dance is a pseudo Guitar Hero/Gitaroo Man exercise where players hit the PS2's face buttons on progressively quickening prompts. The Crazy Dance mini-game is all-the more significant as a failure as its button prompts provide absolutely no rhythmic association to the Crazy Frog musical accompaniment, which is a shame because it would have had offered some semblance of longevity otherwise.

Most truly awful videogames usually throw up some kind of content-related plus point to touch upon by way of light relief to the flow of dirge, but sadly the only content plus point evident in Crazy Frog Racer 2 is that there isn't much on offer and its all over so blessedly quickly. So, ultimately, this reviewer didn't have to waste too much of his passing life in order to bring this overtly delivered diatribe to your attention - though it is time I'll never get back. I can only apologise that you too have unnecessarily wasted valuable moments of your existence reading through this review to ascertain a viewpoint you had no doubt predicted from the off: Crazy Frog Racer 2 is an astoundingly poor title that represents all that is putrid and rotten about the tsunami of franchise/licensed/tie-in dross that continues to sweep across the industry...and it'll probably sell an absolute bundle.

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