Hot Pixel review (PSP)

Wario Ware was an excellent game, despite the fact that on paper it sounded like it should have been terrible. Ten levels each containing approximately ten mini-games that last around five seconds; if you gave that as a game idea to a publisher they would have looked and then laughed and then looked again and then told you not to give up the day job. It shouldn’t have worked and it shouldn’t have been fun, but it was. Unfortunately as Wario Ware was developed by Nintendo, PSP owners were never going to get to sample its delights. Atari therefore stepped into the void and decided to publish Hot Pixel; a game Atari obviously felt could take Wario Ware on at its own game and into a new, urban direction.

They’ve used Z’s instead of S’s so it must be cool!

Hot Pixel’s main game is split into ten levels of various mini-games that last around five seconds each. At the end of every level is a boss battle and once completed you can go back and replay any of these levels to get a higher score or unlock more mini-games. So far so Wario Ware. But instead of a fat moustachioed gasbag as a mascot, Hot Pixel presents to us Djon (played by Jonathan Choquel; no you won’t have heard of him before!) Djon is wacky, French, rides a skateboard because he’s down wit da kidz and also likes gurning at the camera…a lot! He’s also old enough to know better and basically comes across as a complete and utter numpty. Still I suppose it pays the bills.

Despite the faux-street presentation and gurning Frenchman, where it differs from Wario Ware the most is that it isn’t anywhere near as fun! It may boast 200+ mini-games but many of those are repeated (albeit with slight alterations) throughout the game. For instance it doesn’t matter what the pixelated image is, collecting only pink pixels and no other colours still isn’t fun. Neither is punching a security code into a keypad or pushing a plug into a socket.

It seems every PSP has a Hot Pixel…oh sorry we meant dead pixel.

But let’s be fair here, unless PSP owners have a DS as well they wouldn’t have played Wario Ware, so comparisons aren’t really strictly fair. But even taking Hot Pixel on its own merits, it’s a painful experience. It tries to be urban and street but fails in almost every way. Hot Pixel comes across as a game that was developed by a team of people that were too over the hill to understand the demographic they were clearly aiming for.

Introducing short variations of old-skool Atari classics such as Asteroids and Battlezone isn’t enough to save the game when the majority of the mini-games are so lacklustre and uninspiring, and they feel very out of place with the forced street style of the rest of the game.

The ten levels that form the main game can be completed in under forty minutes on Normal. Once beaten you then unlock harder difficulty levels and these make things a little quicker and also try other things to put you off, such as making the screen shake or obscuring your view with skulls. But even then Hot Pixel doesn’t present much of a challenge and you can clock the main game on all difficulty levels in under two hours.

After that you can go back and try to beat your high scores on chosen mini-games. But unless you’re into self-mutilation I can’t see that being an attractive proposition.

Despite the appearance of Djon, Hot Pixel doesn’t cut the mustard!

There are a number of extra levels you can download for free on to your PSP but, while these obviously add a little variety, by the time you need them you’ll have had enough and be wondering who you dislike enough to wrap this up for as a Christmas present. The fact that they implemented a multiplayer mode but then expected both players to own a copy of the game rubs salt into already very deep wounds.

It’s hard for me to think of anyone who would find Hot Pixel entertaining, even at its reduced RRP of £19.99. It would be too fast and frantic for young kids, too ridiculously camp at being street for young teenagers and too brain-numbingly dull for anybody with an IQ over 50 to play it for more than half an hour. What we wanted was a Wario Ware for the PSP, what we got was Grade A crud…bruv!