My Street
- March 12, 2003 00:00 AM PST
Crash Bash meets Animal Crossing meets Jimmy Neutron meets the Internet for a thoroughly unenjoyable PS2 game.
My Street takes party games and tries to give them a neighborhood context. As the literal new kid on the block, you�ll explore your tiny town and meet all the main stereotypes�the science nerd, the farm girl, the dreadlocked beach bum who says �brah� a lot, and more. As you meet other kids and beat them at their favorite games�magnetic marbles, dodgeball, R/C car racing�you�ll unlock more games and activities.The world looks like a Jimmy Neutron�inspired superdeformed freak show: Bulbous children run around the bright neighborhood full of houses built at funny angles. The camera is a nightmare. As you run around town, the game switches between a free-floating follow cam and rigid preset angles, making character movement unnatural and sometimes contradictory. The controls for the mini-games are sharper (games like marbles offer surprisingly deep strategy, too, but will the pee-wee audience even care?), but the poor response on stupid activities like cow herding brings the whole game down. What�s worse, the other kids in the neighborhood never shut up with their character-specific but utterly unamusing smack talk, and the plinky, cutesy soundtrack just reinforces the feeling that you�re in some candy-coated episode of The Prisoner.
While it�s noble that someone has tried to give a party game a plot, the kiddie treatment here is both disturbing and annoying, and the games themselves aren�t all that fun; the addition of PS2 online play does not redeem it. If My Street is your street, move.
