The Guy Game review

Game: The Guy Game
Platform: Xbox
Genre: Casual (Party)
Developer: Top Heavy Studios

Staff review by Jason Venter

September 20, 2004

There’s no way to dress this up and make it sound nice, so I’ll just come right out and say it: if you play The Guy Game for long enough, you will see extremely attractive young ladies flashing their breasts for the camera. It’s just not something you can avoid. With that ugly truth aside, though, you might wonder if the game at least does something you might like. So here’s the question: Will you like this game? Let me give you some options for the answer in multiple choice format, and the sooner you answer the more points you get:

Y) The game pretty much sucks.
X) The game takes a crappy idea and makes it somewhat playable.
B) The combination of breasts and trivia is the best thing to hit the Xbox since Halo.
A) Peter Strauss.

Now you’ve had a chance to answer the question, so it’s time to meet the babe. There’s this guy named Matt Sadler, and he’s a little bit over 30-years-old. He and a crew of people with nothing better to do wrote up a bunch of trivia questions, and they figured the best way to present them was to quiz hot girls visiting the area for Spring Break. The stakes are high; if the girls get them right, they get a point. If not, they flash the camera. So let’s meet a girl I made up for the purpose of this review, Bubbles. We’ll skip on over to actual video of the interview, where Matt and the girl stand in front of what looks like a volleyball net with the logo for The Guy Game dangling nebulously behind them.

Matt: “We’re here with Bubbles. Bubbles, maybe you could tell me a little bit about yourself. How many piercings do you have?”
Bubbles: “Two. Also, I’m hammered from drinking too much last night.”
Matt: “Oh ho ho! Maybe we’ll see some tittie. So tell me, just where are those piercings?”
Bubbles: “Well, one is in my belly-button.”
(Camera zooms in on shot of her flat naval area, where there’s a faint glint.)
Matt: (leering) “And where’s the other one?”
Bubbles: “It’s… down there.”
Matt: “In the sweet spot.”
(Crowd cheers.)
Matt: “So, here’s the question. Will you like this game?”
(Bubbles squints at the sun and looks vapid.)
Bubbles: “Oh, crap.”

Suddenly, the video clip is interrupted. A sexy voice asks “So, what do you think? Does she look like she knows the answer?” Quick! Does she?

Y She’s wrong!
A She’s right!

Your answer is very important, as you’ll see shortly. And you have all the information you need to know whether or not this babe will answer the question correctly, because Matt clarified that one of her piercings is below the naval. This is important, so you should have no trouble choosing whether or not she’s right. The game cuts back to video.

Bubbles: “Wow, I just have no idea.”
Matt: “C’mon, just guess. I really, really want you to win this one.”
Bubbles: “Umm, uh….”
(Bubbles looks frantically to the watching crowd of guys who are shouting out answers such as ‘A six-pack of beer’ and ‘Yes’ and ‘No way, dude!’)
Bubbles: “Uh… umm…”
Matt: “Five seconds.”
Bubbles: “Uh… No?”
(Matt looks to his queue card.)
Matt: “I’m sorry, that answer was wrong. The game totally kicks ass. So, you got a question wrong on The Guy Game. You know what that means.”
(Bubbles looks dejected.)
Bubbles: “Oh, no.”
(Matt holds his fingers up for the camera and starts counting as Bubbles quickly lifts her shirt and starts jiggling her breasts. The logo for The Guy Game covers anything pertinent… or perky.)
Matt: “One, two- three…”
(Bubbles puts her shirt back in place while Matt grins lopsidedly.)
Matt: “Those were nice. You’ve made a lot of men very happy.”

From here, the game flashes to a screen that tallies your score. If you got the question correctly, you’ll receive a maximum of $800 (why the game calls it cash when it’s essentially just a number of points is beyond me). If you properly guessed whether or not Bubbles was correct, you’ll get up to $400 (again, this depends on how quickly you made your choice). At this point, the commentator named Dick will make a comment: “Even I knew that, and I had a hernia operated on years ago!” Now the game switches to what it calls the ‘Flash-O-Meter.’

The Flash-O-Meter is actually an important part of The Guy Game. It starts out in the ‘Soft and Squishy’ region, moves up to ‘Sorta Chubby’ and, if you’re good, concludes with ‘Super Stiff.’ In case you’re wondering, yes. It refers to exactly what you think it does. It also determines how much flesh you get to see when girls get the questions wrong (and every one of them will, due to the obscure nature of some of those questions, as well as the IQ of some of the well-endowed girls). Early on, The Guy Game logo obscures everything. As you properly guess whether or not the girls are smart enough to answer (more on that in a minute), your meter will fill up. If it hits the middle region, you will see no logo, but things are still blurred out. And if you top out with ‘Super Stiff,’ then you get to see nipples galore. This element of the game helps remind you that what you’re playing is really an interactive peep show. It does wonders for the self-esteem.

The problem comes from the fact that most people who play the game are extremely horny. That, or they’re masochistic and are playing it so they can write a review no one will ever read. Either way, they’re not terribly opposed to the notion of an attractive young lady shaking her bosom and smiling for the camera. The last thing they really want to do is ponder whether or not the girl in question is smart enough to answer some of the odd questions that come to light. Still, the game forces this dilemma, so the best a fellow can do is try and answer. However, the game throws another curve: those guys in the crowd who like to shout answers.

Bubbles might be standing there with a dazed look when the game asks you whether or not she’s got the answer, but a moment later some guy from the stands will shout out the perfect response and, depending on how well she’s listening, the girl may very well use that to avoid flashing the camera. Thus, even a total bimbo may end up with the correct response. There’s never a way to be entirely sure on your first trip through an episode.

Furthermore, there’s more to the game than I’ve yet described. After six questions, The Guy Game presents a mini-game. If you’re playing this alone (and you quite possibly are), this game is always the same: launch a ball from a platform and try to land it in the moving cup platforms. The better your shot, the more points you get. If you beat a high score, your cash pot increases by a small degree. A normal round of this lasts about three minutes, enough time to turn any pervert flaccid. Thus, you can choose to skip the second round if you don’t think you’ll enjoy playing it.

Now we’re up to round three, where the rules have changed. You still begin by choosing the answer to a question, but this time you know the girl gets the answer wrong. The game makes no secret of the fact, and your job is now to guess which wrong answer the lady in question will decide upon. So, suppose the question is “Does this game remain fun for more than the first five minutes?” You would then need to quickly choose between “Oh, most definitely” and “I don’t know.” Which wrong answer did she give? As you read and try to decide, the timer counts down rapidly so that even a correct answer hardly has any impact on the Flash-O-Meter at all. It’s possible to get every one of the twelve questions in an episode correct and still not fill the Flash-O-Meter…

…which is just fine, because you will have the ‘opportunity’ to replay episodes in lots of four at a time, if you wish to unlock subsequent adventures. Not only that, but you will start at ‘Sorta Chubby’ on that stupid meter if you at least made it to that point the previous time you played. Translation: by the end of a second trip through an episode, you will be seeing the jiggling goods.

That’s not all you’ll be seeing, though. Assuming your meter is full at the end of round three, you get to experience the fourth round. This part of the game is a bit like betting on dogs down at the track. The girls are asked to participate in some sort of semi-athletic event. Prior to the actual competition, the announcers make some commentary:

Steve: “It looks like the game this time is jump rope. I see there is some confusion here. It looks like Bubbles has decided not to take advantage of the 60-second head start she’ll get if she does it topless.”
(Bubbles looks at the ends of the jump rope that she holds in her hand as if they’re alien objects she’s never seen in her life.)
Steve: “Doesn’t she know she doesn’t have a chance in hell if she doesn’t show some tittie? It looks like Matt is explaining this to her.”
(Matt gestures faintly to Bubbles, who nods and pops up her shirt to expose her breasts.)
Steve: “Ah, that’s better. It looks like she has decided to keep us happy after all. My pants are bulging dangerously, like a volcano about to erupt and spew lava all over the place and send people running to their cars to drive away before they turn into ash. Whew, said that all in one breath!”
(Timer appears on-screen, set to ‘1:00’, and Bubbles begins jumping while her breasts jiggle.)
Steve: “Wow, this is just great. It looks like Bubbles really knows what she is doing. This is the patented ‘double jump’ move that has won many a topless jump rope competition. Look at the grace, those breasts, that--Oh, wait. It looks like she has tripped over the rope and is disqualified. Barely eight seconds. Let’s rewind the tape and watch that more slowly.”
(Tape rewinds and proceeds in slow-motion, then pauses as white lines are drawn on the screen to highlight the breasts and movement.)
Steve: “As you can see here, her melons were helping keep her in stride, but it looks like she tripped on the rope right here because it got caught on her shirt. She should have removed the top completely.”

Next, you get awarded your cash, or the game calls you names for guessing wrong. Assuming you didn’t mess up and lose everything, the girl you chose as your ‘cheerleader’ at the start of the game will next dance in a white room for the camera, and typically show her breasts for you. Or, if you lost everything, the game will make fun of you and a fat guy with a goatee will dance suggestively and massage his gut for your pleasure. Then a new feature in the game (an episode, a new cheerleader, or some video or pictures) will be unlocked and you get to do it all again.

Does this sound fun yet? Even if it does, picture yourself doing this for hours at a time. There are over 1200 trivia questions in the game, and a typical play through a round last somewhere close to a half-hour. For 12 questions. As you can see, this game will last you a very long time, if you can stand playing it for that long. Therefore, the likely set of events is the same for just about everyone.

First, you put the game in your system and watch the menus and such. The girls look great, there are sandy beaches and a sunny sky. This game is pretty neat so far. Then you begin answering questions and you realize they’re actually pretty hard, but that doesn’t matter. Challenge is good. You enjoy snagging bonus icons and getting things right. It’s fun to decide whether or not the babes can answer the same question you just breezed through. The game is still pretty neat. After awhile, though, you get tired of answering the questions, and of picking which response the girls will give. There’s not really a set of rules that makes you feel entirely comfortable, and even your best efforts to fill up the Flash-O-Meter often fail. You realize that you’re working awfully hard just to see some breasts, which isn’t so bad except it takes so dang long. The announcers are also grating on your nerves, but you can’t really turn them off and you can’t always skip past Matt’s nonsense. The game is starting to be pretty disappointing. A few episodes later, you’ve reached the end of a stage just shy of ‘Super Stiff,’ and now you have to play through it all over again. Sure, you can go through with new questions, but at this point you just want the pain to stop. The game sucks.

And that’s the parting thought for just about anyone who plays The Guy Game, I’d wager. What started out as an idea with some promise (however small) has turned into a tedious affair that can’t even be saved by the unlockable extras and the option to bring some friends along for the ride. There may at some distant point in the future arrive a time when nudity and gameplay fit together on the same Xbox disc, but that time has yet to come. Heh heh. I said ‘come.’

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