World Gone Sour

Game Info

Advergaming?  Gamevertising?  Advertigame?  Whatever you want to call it, games as ads for other products are as old as games themselves.  From Chase the Chuck Wagon to the fantastic Sneak King by Burger King, which sold over a million copies (seriously!), these games have run the gauntlet from terrible to actually pretty good.  The latest one, for $4.99 on PSN or XBox Live Marketplace, is for the Sour Patch Kids, entitled World Gone Sour.

Why Sour Patch Kids, though?  Because apparently Method Man really likes them.  Those little candies you buy at CVS and the movie theatre have come to life, and all they want to do is get eaten.  But, as the opening video (narrated by The Office’s Creed Bratton) explains, one got left behind and must travel the world to finally get eaten.  Normally I’d expound on that idea as the building of the notion of an unavoidable, eventual death – but Method Man!  He’s my favorite Wu-Tang Clan member, and he adds a sort of goofy humor to the whole absurd situation.

Anyway, World Gone Sour.  As this little Lost Kid, you traverse levels, collect followers, and platform through areas.  It rips off Pikmin with the little guys, and Little Big Planet 2 for the platforming parts.  Hop around, swing, grow and shrink.  This game is basically a re-skin of a well-made fan level in Little Big Planet.  You fight a lot of sentient bubblegum enemies, as well.  Some wear hats so you’ll need to jump on them twice.  Occasionally a crazed Lost Kid will impede your progress, so you’ll need to jump on them two or three times.  But the weird, slightly disconnected controls lend a floaty ambivalence to movement, ensuring you’ll die a few times before really getting the jump timing down.

The visuals in World Gone Sour are generally acceptable, although it does have a few odd hiccups.  Taking a page directly from LBP2, there is a bit of foreground/background depth that’s always interesting to see.  Unfortunately, the camera can’t always follow your movements between the two, causing it to zoom way in or out randomly.  This also happens in areas with more then one level of verticality, making precise jumps all the more difficult.  And since you collect Lost Kid followers, these miniature versions run around your legs, sometimes causing you to lose track of your feet.  This can keep you from landing accurately on jumps, which of course leads to more deaths.

But hey, Creed Bratton and Method Man (can you believe 36 Chambers came out in 1993?!).  The music is mostly made up of what sounds like B-side beats from a Wu-Tang remix album, although you do get the official World Gone Sour song buried in there occasionally.  Creed does a fair job as the self-aware guy who knows he’s narrating a five dollar video game about candy, as well.  In-game sounds are pretty sparse, though.  Your kids chirrup and yippie now and again, but mostly it’s grunts and the rare whistle.  Bad guys grumble, bosses shriek, and you get to listen to some Method Man.

When all is said and done, World Gone Sour is a five dollar advertisement for a candy you’ve probably forgotten even existed.  Does the game accomplish what it set out to do, since you know what it is?  Maybe.  But this derivative gameplay keeps the game from becoming a Sneak King, and really making it just a Cool Spot.