Get it your way with Burger King’s new value-priced games.
Sneak King
I’m sure this was the game they came up with first, before they made the other two. This is the game where you get to play the King and do the things he does on TV.
Just like in the commercials, it’s your job to sneak up on hungry and unsuspecting members of the populace and give them a hot and tasty Burger King sandwich or coffee. Pretty straight-forward stuff.
The game has four environments to play in, each with 20 missions. The first level is a construction site teeming with workers going about their routines. There are places for the King to hide throughout the stage, but it isn’t necessary to hide to surprise your prey.
People in the levels have a very limited field of awareness, which extends about five feet in front of them, and they have absolutely no peripheral vision. So as long as you’re not standing directly in front of your target they can’t see you.
But you can’t go handing out hot, free food to just anyone who walks by… no, they need to be hungry. You can tell who’s hungry by a thought balloon that appears above their heads showing some food item. Get to them quickly, though, or they collapse from the sheer weight of their hunger and become useless to you.
Once you’ve spotted your target and managed to sneak up on them and present them with food, you get a chance to boost your points by giving your lucky recipient a flourish, the success of which is gauged by a meter that appears on the screen. Time it right and the King will do a dance or even bow for the lucky owner of that egg sandwich.
The execution of the game can be a bit sloppy at times, but the idea itself is fun enough to play for a while.
Big Bumpin’
I have to respect the odd originality of this game. Bumper cars by themselves are fun but don’t necessarily lend themselves to a game. That’s where Burger King steps in. This isn’t a single coherent game but rather a collection of five mini-games with bumper cars as the focus.
The simplest of the games is Last Man Standing, in which you have to pummel your opponents until they run out of energy or fall into one of the pits in the arena. The arena, of course, is riddled with trap doors and roving saws that take bites out of your energy.
Bumpin’ Hockey is probably my favorite game type. The name pretty much speaks for itself on this one. Guide an oversized puck into your opponent’s goal and get the most points to win.
All the action takes place in ten arenas separated into five themes. Each has their own unique pitfalls and advantages and each is designed to make use of a specific game type.
Unfortunately there aren’t enough people playing these games regularly to easily find an online match, so for the most part, that’s out of the question. And, as most of the achievements to be unlocked are based on online play, you aren’t going to score too many gamer points with this game.
There’s also a design-your-own-character mode that feels kind of tacked on to create the illusion of more functionality. You can choose which bumper car you want to compete in, which – aside from the two unlockable cars – boils down to picking your favorite color.
Still, if you’re jonesing for a BK value meal and you’ve got an extra four bucks, this is worth the buy.
Pocket Bike Racers
This is probably the most normal game of the bunch. It’s a kart racer, only with pocket bikes. The name kinda says it all.
For four out of the five game types available the focus is on navigating your bike through sets of cones all around the track. For every set you successfully pass through, a meter, the boost bar, rises on the right of your screen. You can use this boost to either give your bike a quick burst of speed with the B button or use it to fire a weapon at your opponents. The higher the boost bar, the better the item.
These items come in handy, especially in the Battle Royale where laps don’t mean a thing and all that’s important is pummeling the other racers. I like to use the homing bottle-rocket but it takes a few sets of cones to build your boost bar up to that level. The lowest item, the shield, works quite well actually: simply run into your opponents to take them down a notch.
In the Hardcore Racing game type there are no cones and you must win the race solely on the merits of your racing ability. Hopefully you’ve unlocked a few bikes by winning some tournaments or you’ll be stuck with the original two you’re given.
The achievements in this game are mostly centered around off-line play so they’re not as hard to unlock since it’s nearly impossible to find anyone online to play with. But hey, it’s a kart racer, bring a friend or two over, share some of those fries you got with the game and entertain yourselves for a while.
Ultimately, even though the game is only four dollars, it feels incomplete. There are only five tracks to choose from and it gets old having to race through them over and over to unlock the different bikes. Even five more tracks would have gone a long way but I guess you get what you pay for.