Sneakers

Sneakers (In Japan known as Nezmix: Have a Mice Day!) is a 2002 puzzle video game developed by Media.Vision and published by Microsoft Game Studios for the mh:awesomegames:Xbox. The North American release of the game was sold only at Toys "R" Us retail stores.

Plot
The plot begins with a quick shot of a small mouse with a bell on his tail - Tiki, which is climbing up to the top of a small tower. After seeing fireworks and balloons being thrown up in the air, Tiki falls asleep. Elsewhere, four mice - Apollo as the leader, Brutus as the muscle, Watt as the gentleman, and Pete as the gut - find that the provisions that had been set aside in the attic for a party have been absconded with. Naturally upset, everyone begins pointing fingers; Apollo finds a more likely cause of the theft, as he spies a sneaky rat crawling around up in the attic. Knowing that rats travel in packs, Apollo rallies his fellow mice and begins the hunt for the whole rat pack. Finding the rats one by one, and knocking a few senseless for good measure, the gang eventually finds the commanding officer behind the whole rat invasion hiding in the garage and, following an intense battle between the mice and rats gang. Despite the victory, the mice still have no clue who these rats are or what they're up to. However, they are quickly stunned out of their wondering as Bonnie - the local high-society city mouse, worrying about her brother, Tiki, as he has gone missing. Thinking he's lost in the Back Alley, she joins Apollo's squad and rushes off, allowing the rat officer from earlier, who faked his fainting, to run away.

Gameplay
In the game, the player controls a mouse named Apollo, aided by his fellow rodent friends Bonnie, Brutus, Watt and Pete. The player's objective is to find and eliminate the rats in many areas in order to find Bonnie's brother, Tiki. A great part of the game consists of many mazes that contain certain predetermined paths where you can navigate to find the rats, however, there are some beat 'em up sections at the end of each area where your objective is to fight against the rats along with your rodent friends.

Why It Sucks

 * 1) While the idea of a game where you control a group of mice to eliminate rats across many homelike areas is passable, the gameplay manages to ruin this premise entirely. To begin with, the movement is restricted to a linear path with some alternative routes to search the rats, in other words, you can only move where the game indicates you and not where you actually want to move. Also, there is no way to turn back in the middle of a walking section, if you accidentally select a path and you want to turn back, you have to wait until the full group of mice stop, and even if you were able to control the mice freely, the gameplay gets incredibly repetitive after a few minutes and it's not a real challenge to the player, as the rats will never try to evade or attack you when you're in their search, they just stand where they are, like if they were waiting exactly for you.
 * 2) The game has a time limit of 20 minutes per level, and while this may sound like it's too much time to complete the levels, the problem is that the mice have a static speed while they're walking, meaning that they can't walk faster, and as previously mentioned in WiS#1, if you accidentally choose a non desired pat. you'll have to wait until the mice stop walking to get back, something that can take a lot of precious time. This only gets worse when you notice that there is no real reason to have a time limit, as the rats won't escape or move while you're in their search.
 * 3) All of the levels are painfully long, both for the abysmal amount of rats per level (mostly between 30 and 60) and the exaggerated size of the maps and the number of available paths. To give an example, the average time to beat a single level is 40 minutes.
 * 4) Despite the abysmal amount of time to complete a single level, the game only has four levels (five if we count the tutorial section) that can be beaten in around 3 or 4 hours and there are no secret levels or collectables that can give the game a significant replay value.
 * 5) After clearing a certain number of rats per level, a beat 'em up section will start, the problem is that, unlike many other games of its genre, this section will not start automatically, you have to get back to one of the areas you previously cleared just to enter into this section.
 * 6) * This even affects the final boss of the game. Though the map indicates which room the final battle is in, it doesn't tell you where to exactly find the boss, meaning that you will have to wander around the same room just to find the boss.
 * 7) The combat in the beat 'em up sections is really boring and repetitive, it just consists of button mashing without any kind of strategy or combos to make the things funnier, also, you can't unlock any more special attacks, the default attacks are the only ones that you will have for the rest of the game.
 * 8) You can only control Apollo in the beat 'em up sections while your allies are controlled by AI, and while this may sound normal, the problem begins when you notice that the AI of your allies is really poor and most of the times will not try to evade the rats, resulting in a lot of deaths. Also, bad AI also affects the enemies, as they barely try to hit you or have troubles while moving around.
 * 9) The game will only save your progress when you finish a level and there are no mid-level checkpoints, meaning that, if you run out of time, you will have to start from the beginning of the level.
 * 10) Despite being a game from 2002, the graphics are poorly detailed and there isn't a lot of textures that can make the game look more attractive, and because of this, the game feels more like a late mh:awesomegames:Nintendo 64 or Sega Dreamcast game.
 * 11) The animations are incredibly stiff and sometimes they can be unintentionally funny, the best example of this is the walking animation of Apollo in the beat 'em up sections, as it resembles more of a running baby that pooped on his pants, watch for yourself.
 * 12) Generic and uninspired soundtrack that sounds like the typical music that is played in the carnivals, the worst offender is the music used for the beat 'em up sections, because it doesn't fit the game's pacing and makes it look strange.
 * 13) In Japan, the game was announced with one of the most bizarre commercials ever made for a videogame. It uses a j-pop song for the background music and a group of karate fighters to represent many of the mice's movements, including the way they walk, no joke.

The Only Redeeming Quality

 * 1) Even if the graphics look bad for their age, the fur of the mice is pretty well detailed, as they look as if they were made of cotton or plush.

Reception
The game received very negative reviews from critics and players alike and it's considered one of the worst games of all times, to the point that it was a runner-up for GameSpot's annual "Worst Game of the Year on Xbox" award, which went to Gravity Games Bike: Street Vert Dirt. It currently has an average score of 22 on Metacritic.

Famitsu gave a score of two sixes and two fives for a total score of 22/40.

The Official Xbox Magazine gave the game a score of 49 out of 100, shortly describing: "The game is a bizarrely conceived, thinly veiled pseudo-point-and-click adventure with some very simplistic fighting sequences."

Ryan Davis from GameSpot rated the game with a 3 out of 10 and complained about the boring and repetitive gameplay, the bad graphics and how limited has its distribution in the US. In his words: "As a digital game of hiding and seek, Sneakers might be a suitable diversion for the post-toddler age group, but anyone more discerning will quickly tire of the game's half-hearted presentation and repetitive, simplistic gameplay."

Mouseketeer Hilary from IGN gave the game a 20 out of 100, complaining about the unnecessary addition of a time limit, the boring combat, the graphics and the bad audio quality. Citing her verdict: "I plan on burning my copy so that it can't fall into the hands of impressionable children who might then come to think all video games are meant to suck this bad."

The lowest score was 8/100 and it was given by Kombo, shortly describing: "Pretend the game is the plague and avoid it at all costs."

Because of the limited distribution in the US, the absurd advertising of the game for Japan and the unattractive gameplay, the game was a commercial failure.

Trivia

 * This was the only Media.Vision's game for the original Xbox.
 * It is one of the few Japanese games published by Microsoft's publishing label.

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