Sneak King (X-Box 360)
Riv , 2010/06/21 00:31

Publisher:	Blitz Games
Genre:	Stealth Action
Players:	1 Player
Rating	Everyone
The Good:	This game is literally the stuff of nightmares - frighten your girlfriends as you attempt to take the King through four levels of yummy Burger King goodness!
The Bad:	Metal Gear Solid this is not. Awkward controls and a buggy scheme. Game is also prone to lockups.
The Ugly:	The bathrooms of these NPCs if only they existed in the real world. Eating that much Burger King has to give you the shits.

How can you resist a game where you play as a frightening creep that scares women and small children on his quest to force-feed people delicious Burger King meals?

It's amazing how Burger King's ad campaigns have improved greatly since the resurgence of The King, the awesomely-creepy masked mascot that men seem to mark out for but women seem to fear possibly because he is reminiscent of a rapist, yet always gets your attention. There is kind of a funny story about that, which I like to tell people. My ex-girlfriend was pretty much terrified of the Burger King because he just gives her the fucking creeps. She went to take a shower, because she felt she needed one to wash off the vibe of creepiness after having watched me play this videogame.

As she went into the shower our dinner was ready - burgers. I decided to prepare hers on a nice little plate and sneak upstairs and into the bathroom very quietly (which is difficult given my clumsiness and lack of subtlety) - as she was unsuspecting, I thrust my hands and the plate with the burger into the shower which led to her screaming like she was being murdered.

I didn't get sex for a week. It was worth it. Come to think of it it's shit like that which is probably why she is an EX girlfriend.

Anyway, how can you resist a game where you play as a frightening creep that scares women and small children on his quest to force-feed people delicious Burger King meals?

Sneak King is playable on either the regular X-Box game console or on the X-Box 360, yet it's upscaled when used in the 360, not that this game is graphically impressive, or impressive at all. Let's be clear here. You are not getting a Game of the Year Award Winner here - you are getting a game that came free with a $5 meal at your local Burger King. If you're expecting something quality here, you're a fucking cheap Jew bastard and you deserve to be miserable.

The goal of the game is simple - you have four levels, each with 20 challenges. You start off in a lumber mill, and progress to the suburbs, a construction site, and finally into the big city all in the name of feeding people various Burger King meals in the biggest attempt to subliminally advertise a product since the Japanese Playstation title known as Pepsiman.

You must find people with hunger balloons over their head who are daydreaming about Burger King meals, and deliver it to them but they cannot see you, so you need to make sure to stay out of their field of vision. Once you get behind them you push a button to cause a meter with a ball moving up and down, which allows you to gain more points the higher up that it is. You must also do this to your targets before they pass out from hunger from having the munchies over Burger King. You get bonus points if you hop out from behind trees, or from dumpsters and trashcans while sneaking up on them, although it's annoying that due to the half-assed effort of the game, it's not really sneaky as the King just simply casually exits his hiding place while doing so.

I personally never have found Burger King to be the be-all-end-all of fast food, and certainly not enough to crave it to the point that I'm going to pass out if I don't get it. It's not as good as sex or anything, but I guess you have to suspend disbelief with videogames now and then, and seeing as Burger King put this game out themselves (I'm pretty sure Blitz Games consists of a team of 25 minimum wage Burger King employees with moderate computer skills to begin with) they can do what they want.

Unfortunately the challenges aren't as easy as they sound. You have to score ridiculously high to get an A rank or more in order to get those pesky achievements - most of which aren't actually difficult, just highly annoying and will take a lot of practice. This would be fine and good if not for the fact that the game is prone to crashes and freezing - an obvious side effect of trying to make it run on both the original and newer X-Box system. On top of that repetitive (yet insanely creepy) music and a lack of much innovation (the King only has about 3 special dances - or flourishes he does while delivering food), and you have a very repetitive game that is a novelty at best that will probably at some point make you want to just turn it off and go find better things to do. Seriously if you have the time to get 200/200 achievement points in Sneak King it's a bad sign for your life, as it means you have seriously hit rock bottom and have nothing to do, no one to talk to, no friends, no prospects, no motivation, and no future. Kill yourself.

There's really not much to write home about with this game - it's simply mediocre in every possible way. There's not much of a plot, even less of an ending, and most of the challenge levels are simply irritations that need to fuck off and die. In the time you play this you could be playing any infinite number of superior videogames. And yet there's something about this game, maybe a morbid curiosity? I don't know what it is but I think that despite the fact there is no possible logical reason to want to play this, it compels people to it.

If you're looking for novelty and a game that makes your friends lovers and family ask you "why do you even own this" as they fumble through your videogame collection, Sneak King is the game for you, and even actually affordable if you can find it used at your local Gamestop for the low, low price of 99 cents (because nobody actually buys this game). It makes a great stocking stuffer or last-minute gift that can either give one of two messages: Either it says "I'm a warped motherfucker, so are you and I thought you'd enjoy this," or it says "I fucking hate you with all my heart." The recipient of the game will probably spend more time wondering which message you were trying to convey than actually playing this game.

-- Riv - jasonrivera@jasonrivera.com