Fun With Doritos

The most fun I had all weekend (gaming-wise, that is) was playing Doritos: Crash Course.

D:CC is, in essence, a platformer. It should be noted before-hand that I hate platformers. I suck at them. If there is a pit, I will fall head first in it, if there is a monster, I will try to befriend it. Mario, Sonic, Samus: I hate them and they hate me (well, Samus and I saw eye to eye in Metroid Prime). But I had no idea what D:CC was until I played it and I was pleasantly surprised.

Doritos: Crash Course is brought to us by Chilean minds. I didn't even know Chile made games. But apparently they do and I even like them.

I spent most of the weekend downloading demos for the Xbox, a recurring ritual I undertake to see what's out there without having to commit to anything. I downloaded D:CC because... well, because it's free. Which was the only reason I donwloaded Doritos: Dash of Destruction in the first place.

I didn't like Dash of Destruction. If I remember correctly you can play as either a T-Rex or a delivery guy/gal/person and the objective is to either elude the T-Rex or catching the delivery character. It wasn't really my thing but Mikey hastily unlocked every achievement on it, he had so much fun.

As I said, platformers aren't my thing either but D:CC didn't seem to care. On loading up a single player run I was greeted with a very "American Gladiator" inspired set, on the middle of which was.. me. Well, not me exactly, but my avatar. I knew nothing about the game so I most certainly wasn't expecting that. And then a countdown and I was still unsure of what I was supposed to be doing. Suddenly I find myself dashing and jumping crazily and carefree over gaps and dodging balloons. I found myself smiling through fiercely clenched teeth. My squeals of frustration caught the atention of the male who proceeded to mock my failed attempts to catch that rope or jump that far.

"Can I join?" he asked after he managed to control his manic laughter. The game features a multiplayer split-screen mode so I gave up my attempts to not get squished by an entire corridor and we proceeded to mock each other's arm flails.
The game isn't very long (about 15 courses total, I think) but it doesn't need to be. It cuts you some slack, meaning that, if you really can't get past that hurdle you can always just skip ahead. Of course, it'll dub you a chicken and rob you of a course completion time but you can still continue to have fun without having to give up just because your fingers have cramped up sufficiently that you just can't get that particular timing right.

And our fingers did cramp up. It had been a while that a game had provided so much entertainment for so little money.

Can you find the cat?
Because it was the first thing I saw when I looked at this wall.