E3 Impressions: 2K Play
For those with small children, 2K Play has a wonderful line up for the young and impressionable. Whether it’s a party or just some gaming with the family, these games incorporate multiplayer with the little ones with colorful palettes and simple gameplay.
Parties can be a headache to plan if you’re a parent. Enter Birthday Party Bash that hopes to help. It includes the game, invitations to send out, and coupons for Duncan Hines product. In conjunction with e-vite.com you’ll also be able to invite little guests to the party when the hard copies run out. With this great package, you might think they skimped somewhere, but it didn’t seem to be with the game itself.
Birthday Party Bash is a multiplayer party game with a birthday party theme. The end objective is to help create a birthday for a particular person. You’ll be able to play games that kids play at their parties such as Pin the Tail on the Donkey and bashing a pinata. The games are simle, but suprisingly fun. For example the Duncan Hines Cake Stacker game of balancing cakes on a moving surface presented an enjoyable challenge. There was one negative experience for me however and that was when I was playing the balloon popping game. I couldn’t get the Wii Remote to pop the balloon by using the motion so I ended up using the B button and hovering over each to perform the task. Not a deal breaker, but I could see a few kids getting frustrated over it if it wasn’t a bug.
The game has three modes of gameplay, custom, free, and quick. Custom allows you to pick which games you’d like to play for the party, so if you’re planning one this will be the mode to use. Quick allows a good pick up and play experience so you don’t have to go through the story. Free allows you to play whichever of the games you feel like playing.
This is the new game 2K Play hopes will make it along the lines of the Carnival Games franchise. To help pave the way for the potential success, they’ve teamed up with Duncan Hines for a promotion. Not only can the company’s logo be seen in the game during a mini-game, but also a coupon will be included in every copy to be used on Duncan Hines products. It’s a seemingly greatly bundled package for $39.99 with everything included and it’s launching on my birthday, July 14th to boot!
I’ve never heard of this game and thought going in that it was a strange name. Little did I know that the main character is Chinese American and speaks Madarin. Kai-lan loves to learn and educate about the Chinese culture. None of this I saw implemented when I was shown the game briefly however.
The mini game I was shown was extremely simple since this is made for a much younger audience. One holds the controller on its side with buttons facing up. Button one and two make your character jump while the D-pad moves you around. Our task was a simple one, jump on a pump that allowed a simple machine to pump out bubbles. Once the bubbles started to fall on screen, collect as many as possible. Optionally you can either work together or make it a competition to see who can get the most.
It was a simple game with the little I saw, but with the younger age group they’re targeting (under 10 I believe was their goal), it seemed appropriate.
Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus (Wii)
Going into this game, I was honestly expecting a the name of Ringling Bros. to be slapped on a box and shipped with little effort. I was happy to see that wasn’t the case here.
The main navigation screen made it clear that it would be a colorful fun experience. As for the games themselves, when I saw the example of the motorcycle cage and high wire, it seemed to fit well. To control the motorcycle you simply hold the Wii Remote and Nunchuk and rev the controller. If you need to know how to do a certain game, there’s instructions before each game as well. Although they didn’t have the options in action, the game will work with Wii Motion Plus and the Wii Balance Board.
It wasn’t a bad effort from what I saw, but because I didn’t get to see much, I’ll reserve final judgement on the retail version of the game of course.
