Game Review: Kazook

Game: Kazook
Console: Sony Playstation Portable
Developer: Monte Cristo Multimedia
Release Date: 20th October 2006

I like minigame games. Done right they can be a lot of fun, and provide a great amount of variety and replayability. Kazook cost me £1 from a trade in store, so I wasn't expecting too much from it, especially with visuals like those displayed above. Amazingly the game still managed to disappoint me, even with the lowest of expectations.

Single player mode has three types of gameplay; Practice, Regular and Party Mode, which is locked until all minigames are unlocked. That's right, of the 30 minigames featured in the game, only 5 can be played at the start, the others require 10,000 in game dollars to be earned each. Players earn 100 dollars for beating a minigame, and 1000 for each place they reach on the high score table, from 10th. Unfortunately all of the high scores for every minigame are so high that 8th or 9th is probably the only position achieveable.

Since I was only able to access a few of the game's minigames I can talk in detail about how poorly designed and executed they were. The first game I attempted is pictured above; a pong-esque air hockey game which has hit detection and physics that can be summarised as "the worst I've seen on PSP ever". The ball goes straight through the 'paddle' a lot of the time, it's hard to make things happen in the way that you want them to, and the opponent doesn't really have much of a clue either.

Other games include an alien abduction game which plays very poorly and doesn't allow players enough time to abduct, a boring zombie shooting game which could very well have been a free flash game online at some point, and a game based on hitting baseballs at males who are attending a pool party. It's pretty safe to say that I wasn't missing much by only having unlocked a few of the games available.

Graphically the game looks like an awful mix of assets from other projects and generally themed items. The PSP can do much better than this in terms of graphics, and players deserve better. Soundwise there are very short music loops to accompany each minigame as well as silly supposedly humourous voice bites such as "Son of a B!" and similar almost expletives.

Overall Kazook is just another lazy minigame title, attempting to enter the genre based on their quantity of minigames rather than their quality. Added to the fact the unlocking and progression system doesn't gives players any incentive to continue with the game, and this is a PSP title that you can fully experience in well under half an hour.

Rating: 20/100
Grade: F