-- The Games --
-- Site Features --
-- Everything Else --
The obvious comparison with Mario Party has to be made, and frankly, at this point, Shuffle isn't stacking up favorably. Party's star feature, obviously, is in its four-player mini games. Running around the board is, well, boring. It was never much of an issue though, because there was a guaranteed mini-game at the end of all four players' turns. In Shuffle, the only time you get a mini-game is when you actually land on a mini-game square. And even then, it may not always be a "Mini Game"...sometimes it will be a "Mini Event", stupid little sequences for one player that have various effects. Consequently, the majority of gameplay is spent running around the board. That's bad thing #1. Bad thing #2: ironically, the card feature is both Shuffle's most unique aspect and also its biggest drag. You have a hand of six cards: the number on the card you decide to play is the number of spaces you move. You can choose your direction, but you must move the full amount of spaces...no stopping short. That harmless-sounding flaw could just turn out to be the game's death knell. In the one game I played with my siblings, we spent more time just trying to play the proper mathematical arrangements of cards to land on the right spaces than anything else. (Unlike Mario Party, where merely passing the Star space would earn you a chance at the prize, you actually have to land on the Precioustone space in Shuffle.) It's kind of cool at first, because it seems like you have to use some level of strategy, but by the third Precioustone we were sick of skipping back and forth trying desperately to land on one blasted square. As if these issues didn't slow the game down enough already, Shuffle boasts what are the most ungodly load times I have yet witnessed on Dreamcast. The board has a load, every mini-game has a load, exiting the mini-game has a load, special events have loads... And once again, the longer you play, the worse it seems to get. At some points, we found ourselves ignoring the Precioustones altogether and simply aiming for the mini game squares. The games themselves are extremely cool, and easily Shuffle's best feature: tossing characters around in a frying pan, playing a giant lumbering around trying to squish your opponents (who in turn are running around trying to blast you down with bazookas), a game of real Sonic "Labyrinth"... They're hilarious to see and even funner to play. It's a real bummer that more emphasis wasn't placed on these than on the questionable "board" elements of the game. Another thing that really sucks is that, in order to unlock the extra stuff, you have to be playing the one-player Story mode. The four-player Versus match is just that: a match. When it's over, the game restarts and that's that. No Rings for the collection pool, no extra characters unlocked... If I was barely able to put up with the tedium of a four-player match, I can't imagine how I'm going to fare going off against some lame-ass computer opponents. There are some additional features I haven't really touched on, like the semi-cool Forcejewels and the slight changes in the board layout that occur over extended playtime... But they were mostly unnecessary superficialities that further serve to complicate what's already a game that's far too complex for its own good. My first impression, I'm sad to say, is not too favorable. I'll keep going and see what happens, but I fear that Sonic's triumphant rebirth in Sonic Adventure could just prove to lead to a brand new era of cash-in shame. Let us pray. Perhaps you'll be inspired to say your prayers after grabbing a couple eyes full of the latest Cool Team Swag.
(Shenmue [a number of people suggested this one...])
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