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Charming presentation; easy controls; low price.
Only one level with no differences every round; no online leaderboards.
The Crazy Chicken games may not be too popular in the United States, but over in Europe it’s got quite the following. Known as “Moorhuhn” over there, it’s spawned stuffed animals, comic books, music, the works– and it’s all based on exactly the kind of addictive gameplay that Crazy Chicken: Pirates 3D brings to Nintendo eShop for $1.99.
The game is pretty simple. Upon starting the game, players are thrown into a panorama of pirate chickens (I doubt I’d be able to write this sentence in any other situation) loitering along a beach. Using the stylus to pan and the L and R buttons to shoot, players must gun down as many Crazy Chicken pirates as possible within a 90-second period, while avoiding– uh– not shooting them down. The cartoonish chickens don’t fire back, and they don’t even seem to mind being shot. They will, however, knock on your screen and glare indignantly, or backstroke around oblivious to the plight of their brethren. It’s all pretty well-animated, and certainly charming considering the circumstances.
You can earn more points by scoring more difficult shots (like in the head) as well as shooting various other destructible objects in the scenery, from gunpowder kegs to pirate flags, and a smattering of diamonds, doubloons, and skulls will put players well on their way to the only other level in the game– a bonus stage where players will be able to destroy more pirates via deck cannon. They’re in the same place every round, too, so piping up those reflexes should help players get all of them eventually.
In fact, everything’s in the same place every round. Chickens will do the same thing every game, music cues (such as a Jaws vamp when a chicken pretends to be a shark) will play at the same time– this game is really a clockwork carnival gallery in eShop game form. Scores are saved after every round, certainly, but with no online leaderboard functionality it’s difficult to ascertain just how good you are compared to everybody else. Even locally speaking, there’s no Wii Sports-style histogram or nicely organized bar graph to see how your reflexes shine in mano-a-chicken combat. The only measure presented to you is another game of, well, chicken.
But while Crazy Chicken: Pirates 3D‘s single level might seem incredibly repetitive, it is only $1.99– and its presentation, quirks and all, is just endearing enough to justify those two bucks. For a cup of coffee you, too, can relentlessly commit heinous murder against chickens dressed up as pirates. It’s a simple game that hearkens to simpler times, and one that never puffs up to any higher ideal than entertainment.
Nintendojo was provided a copy of this game for review by a third party, though that does not affect our recommendation. For every review, Nintendojo uses a standard criteria.
