breakfast has been eaten and Moms and Dads go off to work, the kids go out to
play. What is it that they play with? The usual stuff — marbles, RC cars,
molecules… Okay, so that last one isn’t exactly "usual," but this is a
video game, so uncommon things are expected.
In My Street, you control a
young child (boy or girl) who has been taken away from the life he once knew
and moved to a new neighborhood. School is set to start in about 20 days, so
you only have three weeks to make some new friends. You do that by running
around the neighborhood, looking for other children to play some games with.
None of them want anything to do with you at first (I’m sure every child can
relate to that), but once you do a favor for a kid, or acquire a new toy —
bam, you become popular.
To become super popular,
and earn the respect of all the other kids, you’ll have to beat them at their
favorite games: Marbles, RC Racing, Volleyball, Chicken Herding, Lawn Mowing,
Chemistry and Dodge Ball. Upon doing that, the kid you defeated will become
your new friend and you will be able to challenge him/her at any time.
Daylight restrictions
prevent the children from playing outside for more than 10 hours (an hour is
equal to 60 seconds of real time, giving you around 10 minutes of play time
per day). The neighborhood parents are strict — no one can go out and play
before 10:00am, and no one can stay out past 8:00pm (most kids are told to be
home by six).
Among the mini-games, RC
Racing is without a doubt, the best one My Street has to offer. I could see a
lot of kids playing it just for this mini-game. RC Racing will take you back
to the days of 16-bit off-road racing games. Back then, there was no such
thing as 3D racing, so tracks were sometimes played from a top-down view.
That’s the case here. Steering will seem a bit strange to younger gamers,
especially those are too young to remember the time when the SNES was king.
Hit left and the vehicle will turn left; hold the button and it’ll continue to
circle in that direction. The opposite is true when the analog stick is
pressed to the right. Many games have used this control style and failed, but
My Street does a really good job of mimicking (and in some ways improving
upon) the classic 16-bit racers that invented it.
The 10 tracks are almost
entirely variations of each other, but each one has a different hazard (such
as a mud puddle), or a different way of using that hazard to keep things
interesting. Better yet, there are power-ups, like rockets (which make your
opponents’ vehicles stall) and turbo boosts. When controlling a tank, you can
fire missiles that will launch your opponents off the ground, allowing you to
drive right past ’em!
Chicken Herding isn’t my
favorite game, but it is surprisingly addictive (not the point where you can’t
stop playing, but to the point where you’ll want to come back and play it more
than you ever thought possible). In this game, you’re not really herding
chickens, but merely guiding them from the main coop to your coop. This is
done by placing a limited amount of arrows in front of the chicken’s path.
Arrows (up, down, left and right) are placed using the triangle, X, square and
circle buttons, respectively. This is a tad confusing at first, since your
first instinct for an arrow pointing up would be to press up on the
directional pad. Sorry kids, but that won’t work. You’ll just have to get
used to the odd, but useful control scheme that was chosen for this particular
game. Although this is a very simple mini-game, a lot of strategy goes into
setting up your arrows in a way that will prevent your opponents from herding
the most chickens.
Lawn Mowing is somewhat
of a variation of RC Racing (at least in track design). The controls are
pretty much the same, but here the goal is to cut the most grass. It sounds
silly, but it’s actually entertaining. Flowerbeds are inconveniently placed
near tight corners, and hitting them will result in a five-point deduction
from your total score. Hitting weeds, on the other hand, nabs you five extra
points, and hitting thick patches of grass will award you 25 points!
Chemistry is an
interesting puzzler with one goal: to make your opponents fill up their
beakers first. When the multi-colored molecules drop down, do your best to
make sure that the red ones stick with the red ones, and that the green
molecules are connected to other green molecules, etc. After several
molecules of the same color are connected, you may begin scratching your head,
wondering why they haven’t disappeared. The answer is simple: this isn’t
Tetris. When molecules of the same color are meshed together, they charge
your power meter. When it’s full, you can choose to either A) zap your own
molecules to keep your beaker empty, or B) zap your opponent’s molecules to
make them turn to stone! When stoned, molecules cannot be zapped away! This
means that the zapped opponents are more likely to fill up their beakers
before everyone else.
Keeping the pace with the
other games, Chemistry is a little slower than necessary, but it’s still a
pretty cool mini-game. It’s so much better than having another Tetris
knock-off.
My Street’s version of
volleyball is a little different from the DoA Xtreme-type games out there.
The gameplay is a little slower, and the camera is positioned from the side
and cannot be changed. It’s still very much like tennis though, and has all
the necessary components of a decent volleyball game, including a large red
circle that indicates where the ball will land. Stand underneath the circle
and hit the ball before it lands to keep the game going. Graphic effects like
fire and smoke are used to add more visual appeal to this mini-game, giving
the ball a meteor-like appearance.
In Marbles, you play as a
special marble that can use its magnetic force to pull the other marbles close
to it. Magnetized marbles will switch to your color, and that’s when you know
it’s time to guide them into the goal. This is a fun way to kill time, and is
especially fun when playing with other gamers in an offline multiplayer
match. You can play all of the games online, but this is one more fun
offline.
Lastly, there’s the
somewhat boring mini-game known as Dodge Ball. I have never been a fan of
these video games, so I would assume that dodge ball fans will like this
mini-game a lot more than I do. It is, however, a bit slower (and more
sluggish) than the popular dodge ball game released at Game Boy Advance’s
launch.
As Sony’s first
alternative to Mario Party on the PlayStation 2, My Street is a high-quality
game. We’d all rather be playing Sly Cooper, Ratchet & Clank or the upcoming
Jak & Daxter 2. But this is a game of mini-games, ones that are much more
than the usual button-mashers of other party games. This is the first online
multiplayer game designed specifically for children, and while it’s certainly
no answer to EverQuest, I do think that most young kids — especially those
who love Mario Party — will enjoy it.
Gameplay: 5.9
As a
single-player game, My Street is a bore. It won’t entertain you for very
long, and the story and the dialogue is really pathetic. Not that kids expect
more (just look at the quality of most Saturday morning cartoons), but just
because they don’t expect more, doesn’t mean they shouldn’t get it.
Graphics: 5
My Street doesn’t
even begin to scratch the surface of PlayStation 2’s true power. Better
graphics wouldn’t have improved the quality of the game, but it would have
made it more appealing to children, who are usually attracted by great
graphics more than the teen and adult hardcore gamer crowd.
Sound: 3
Silly, childish
music, and a number of boy/girl voice-overs that sound very similar. Most of
the boy voice choices sound like they were recorded by a woman! Fox proved
that it can work for The Simpsons, but I’m sorry, it just doesn’t work here.
Difficulty: Easy
Any child who’s
played through a PS2 game — any PS2 game — will be amused by the lack of
challenge here. Simple chores like milking a cow are rather pathetic (and
extremely boring) in comparison to the time-consuming tasks of Herdy Gerdy.
Concept: 6
Kudos to the
developers for coming up with Chemistry. They could really expand on it and
turn it into a full-fledged puzzler.
Multiplayer: 7
The multiplayer
mode is My Street’s saving grace. Online or offline, broadband or dial-up, My
Street enables gamers to get together and play, whether they are in the same
room or not.
Overall: 6.7
Now that My
Street has been released, children everywhere will finally get to know what
it’s like to get all their sunlight from a video game. "Go outside and play,"
your parents say. And then you load My Street, leave the in-game house and
start searching the neighborhood for someone to play with.
