CID the Dummy Wii Review
Just when games like House of the Dead: Overkill and Mushroom Men: The Spore Wars start to re-affirm your faith in the potential of Wii games; something like CID the Dummy comes along and smashes all of your hopes and dreams into tiny little pieces.
Perhaps naively, I was actually cautiously optimistic about playing this game. The press releases I had read had given the impression that the plot held some intrigue, and that the characters would make the most of the original premise. I was wrong.
Title character CID is a Crash Impact Dummy, spending his life being bashed about in the name of safety. He longs to escape the drudgery of his existence, and when his creator, Professor B.M.Werken, sends him on a life-threatening mission to save his daughter, CID is only too eager to accept.
Unfortunately, the experience of playing CID isn’t too different from the continuous, repetitive physical abuse of being a crash dummy. Whoever voiced the Professor’s character seems to empathise with your plight, as every line of dialogue is spoken in such a squeaky, wavering voice that it’s clear his balls are being slowly crushed whilst he’s talking.
At its heart, CID is essentially a 2D-action platformer, as it makes no worthwhile use of the third dimension in gameplay. Unfortunately, this game is stuck about eight years in the past in more ways than one.
Graphically, CID resembles an early PS2-era title, and the enemy and level-design goes back much further into the annals of gaming history than that. Obstacles to jump over include electric barriers, saw blades, spikes, rolling logs, pools of acid, flame vents and every other generic platforming deathtrap of the last twenty years. The jumping physics aren’t enjoyable in the least, with CID floating upwards and then plummeting towards the ground like a sackful of dead pigs once he reaches the apex of his jump.
So far, so yawn. But surely some redeeming factor could be made from the originality of the Crash Dummy character and the Wii’s unique control scheme, right? Wrong again. The only Crash Dummy-related move that CID has is bashing his head through a wall to break it. This is used infrequently and is neither entertaining nor challenging.
The rest of the game certainly can’t be accused of lacking challenge, as the horrible controls and bad game design conspire against the player to make CID more frustrating than a baby that won’t stop crying no matter how hard you shake it.
CID’s basic attack is supposedly Kung-Fu punching, but if swinging your fists side-to-side like an angry monkey is Kung Fu, then consider me a martial arts master. This attack can only be activated with a vertical waggle of the Wii remote. Not the more natural-feeling horizontal waggle, or a more forgiving general waggle, ONLY a vertical waggle. The slight delay between you performing the action with the remote, and CID performing the command is infuriating, and often your gesture will fail to even register at all, leaving you flailing around like an epileptic caught in the glare of a strobe light.
Surely it’s a relief then that CID is equipped with a handy bazooka, so that he can simply attack from a distance? Wronger than obese mature porn. Some bright spark developer had the great idea that to equip the bazooka, the player must hold down the A button and perform a gesture with the Wii Remote as if they were hoisting a bazooka onto their shoulder. This terrible idea (which usually takes several attempts to register on-screen) wouldn’t have been so bad if you didn’t have to do it every few seconds.
The bazooka, which fires kid-friendly rubber bullets, is the preferred way of attacking. But almost every other action cannot be performed without first un-equipping the bazooka. Just to pour some salt into an already gaping wound, the developers decided to include some completely unnecessary pointer control too. So once you’ve put your remote on your shoulder, you have to spend a few more seconds aligning the pointer, and by that time, you’re often dead.
The game would clearly work just as ‘well’ without these stupid controls, as you can’t even shoot enemies unless you’re on the same level as them and facing towards them anyway. You know Wii controls are bad when you’re longing for a DualShock controller in your hands. In fact, if you’re playing this game on PS2 you can almost certainly add another point to the score.
There’s a good reason that very few games released nowadays no longer implement a lives system. That was all well and good in the days before you could save your game, so games naturally were often shorter, and giving players a limited number of lives was a good method to prolong the gaming experience. Apparently someone at Twelve Games has taken too many blows to the head as research for CID, as losing all your lives forces you back to the main menu where you must reload your game and replay the whole level again.
CID doesn’t even start you back with your original five lives when you get a Game Over, it gives you a single life to retry with, thus making things even harder. Dying will be a frequent occurrence, as if the controls don’t kill you, the camera will. Although the game is played from a side-on perspective, by the time many enemies and hazards appear onscreen they’ll have already killed you.
There are a few Boss fights, which are unsatisfying, repetitive and drag on for far, far too long. Throw in a couple of boring vehicle missions, some ill-advised stealth sections and some puzzles that consist of pressing a button to open a door and you’ve got yourself a lovely recipe for disaster.
Trying to play CID the Dummy is so frustrating that it should be classed as a WMD. If an already-angry dictator gets his hands on this title, we could quite easily see World War III kick off. Next time a game developer decides to make a game like CID the Dummy, it would work out better for everyone if instead they drove a car at top speed towards a brick wall, without a seatbelt.
You’d have to be a real dummy to spend any money on this.
13 comments ↓
Ian S.
May 3rd, 2009
ouch, looks like something to avoid!
Andy
May 3rd, 2009
The wii version is not the same as the others so no score can cover all the versions. Twelve games are not a rich company like you are used to. We finance our own games and release them to little market awareness and sites like this affect our sales figures, this means less investment into budget gaming and an even smaller budget to play with as little sites like you should be mutually aware.
We intended to use no motion control but the publisher insisted we added a feature in order to do better with the critics and have a unique selling point. The response from internal testing was very positive and you’ll be hard pressed to find a better gun animation in a 2d game that we have programmed. We tried to go back to old school 2d platforming with faux 3d level design the lives system was benificial to that, the game was not marketed towards you but to children who never had a super nintendo or a sega console. Studies have shown 2d games are more appealing to children.
I understand Dark Zero’s edgy journalism style but this review was filled with pointless and childish metaphors about sex and violence.
A poor review.
Seth
May 3rd, 2009
I’m sorry, but the motion controls completely ruin the game. No child is going to have the patience to get a motion ‘just right’ so the game will recognise it.
The lives system is a terrible idea in a game aimed at children, especially ones who never grew up with classic 2D platformers. This game is much too hard for the age of child it appears to be aimed at. Again, it seems you ignored the fact that children can get frustrated even easier than adults. With their short attention spans, no child will have the patience to keep trying a level over and over again.
I HAD to play this game, and even then it was an effort to keep dragging myself back onto it. If a child has a choice between playing this game, or reading a book, watching TV, staring out of the window etc. there’s going to be no competition.
Maybe next time instead of trying to release your game on many platforms, you concentrate your budget on making a decent game on a single platform?
A small budget is no longer a good enough excuse for a terrible title, as so many small developers have proven it’s possible to make fantastic basic games. Maybe look into the downloadable market?
Ben
May 3rd, 2009
The review details have been updated to make it clear this is the Wii version.
I should add that budget doesn’t come into the equation. DarkZero has awarded some very high scores to independent and relatively unknown titles in the past. Last year Braid was awarded 10/10 and we were one of the first sites to sing its praises prior to release. Braid was also voted second in our Games of 2008 list. Other appropriate titles that spring to mind are Mr Robot (9/10, 2007) and Rolando (9/10, 2009).
sdsd
May 3rd, 2009
I might want to play this game….while this article said had nothing nice to say, a lot of its complaints are things I would view as pluses. Faux 3d, 2d platforming is a plus.
The lives system is a plus.
Every generic platforming obstacle and enemy is a plus.
Breaking up platforming with vehicles and stealth is iffy, but we’ll see.
The only thing I would say is certainly a minus is ill-implemented waggle/pointer controls. Once again though, I haven’t actually played the game. I just love 2d platformeres.
Thomas
May 3rd, 2009
Obviously the game is not directly aimed at us, but, like us, kids still enjoy games with good design and gameplay.
The problems listed may not stand out as much to younger people, but they are still there, and they still hamper the experience.
If this was one of the games I first played back when I started gaming it would have turned me away from the hobby completly.
Summary: Kids deserve good quality games too.
@Andy
May 19th, 2009
If you make a 2.5D platformer; you’re competing with Klonoa. Is this game better than it?
Steve
May 19th, 2009
Give the guy a break, how would you like to release a low budget release to poor sales that you’ve clearly put your heart into just to have it ripped apart by some critics?
@steve
May 20th, 2009
Yeah, I know.
Although I am actually curious; does he think his creation, CID the Dummy, is better than Klonoa?
Unfortunately, as a consumer, I am inclined to buy the better game when no IP nor established license is present to mess up my perception. I’ve played klonoa, but I haven’t played CID the Dummy. If this game isn’t as good as Klonoa, it doesn’t really matter what the review score is, it still isn’t as good as the best possible option. It’s the reason why if you make an indie game, it can usually only be successful if it is unique, as a bigger budget leads to a better alternative.
However, if you really want to make money on a small budget, look into Data Design Interactive’s techniques. Your creations will be bashed just as badly and gamers will avoid your games at any cost, but you’ll turn a profit using their buisness model. Thus, you’ll have funds to eventually work on a bigger project and a better game. In the same manner as High Voltage Software.
Steve
May 20th, 2009
Data Design don’t even try tho, they clearly have no intrest in quality, the racing games are full of dead ends and glitched that throw your car in the air and the platformers feature enemies who can chase you through walls and float upwards.
And ninjabread man! when you get to the second last level the game just returns you to the title screen.
@steve
May 20th, 2009
I know. They also take their old games and pretty much re-texture them.
Perhaps this is the wrong attitude, but if a game is going to be bad, it might as well be cheap to make. No use putting effort into something that will get destroyed by both reviewers and sales charts, as expencive and bad is a much worse combination than cheap and bad.
But I’m no game designer, nor am I an expert. I just do too much research in my spare time. And from what I gather, I don’t actually expect Twelve to ever make a game I would be interested in. The only way I would ever be interested in twelve is if they were to do something similar to High Voltage, and at some point make a big budget, well polished title.
But buisness practices for “shovelware” is something I do not understand, as I have only kept up with the big titles, an exceptionally bad company (DDI), and another bad company that is making a very promising title (HVS).
Steve
May 20th, 2009
I doubt the game would get lambasted by the critics if it was any good. It’s a vicious circle as the internet is full of very savey well researched gamers. If you make a bad title, people won’t be forgetting it in a hurry.
But i’d go as far to say DDI and these Dummy guys have no intrest at all in making a quality title, budget or not.
@steve
May 21st, 2009
They aren’t interested in highly informed internet gamers. They’re interested in attracting the nine-year-olds I met at gamestop who were just as interested in Monsters v. Aliens as they were in Mario Kart Wii.
However, I repeat: look at High Voltage Software. They are a classic case of a company the spews out a ton of licensed shovelware. All of it completely forgotten in the wake of one potentially good game that hasn’t even been released yet.