This game is backwards compatible with the Xbox 360
Developed by Presto Studios, creators of The Journeyman Project, Whacked! was the final game to ship from Presto Studios in 2002 before closing their doors. Their reason for becoming defunct was because at the time, they couldn't compete with console gaming and were strictly more so developers for the PC platform, hence it wasn't an easy transition for them to compete with console titles although Myst III: Exile did get its own Original Xbox port, Whacked! was the only one that was an Only on Xbox exclusive meaning Microsoft owned and still owns the IP rights to it.
Before reviewing, Presto Studios did in some form come back from the dead by reviving and remastering The Journeyman Project, you can find their YouTube channel and more info about that here
https://www.youtube.com/user/TheJourneymanProjectThe Journeyman Project is most likely what they were best known for in the early 90s and still are best known for that.
Anyway, on with the review. Whacked! is one of those obscure titles for the Original Xbox. Its one of those games that make you question if its even real. It has its own cheese in terms of story, some are humorous, some are flat out disturbing, but not too disturbing since it does have a T rating. Both GameShow mode and Battle mode give you the following difficulty options: Easy, Normal, Hard, and Whacked! Whacked!, being the hardest difficulty.
Story: (contains spoilers)
The story in GameShow mode goes that you are here to compete for a series of light hearted and potentially lethal games, the one with the most wins who survives each game will be winning the prize, which is a complete mystery, no one knows what it is and its heavily guarded behind a vault with a lot of question marks on top.
There are 4 stages to beat with 3 sets of random game types, in each stage, the game times get progressively longer and longer. There are no real penalties for losing, you just have to try again.
Each contestant has its own prize behind the vault when the game ends, after the fact that it is revealed that VanTastic himself is the devil and the whole Gameshow set turns out to be hell. Van did state that at one point in a phone call that there is no prize, and he restates this after the contestant you play as wins and the show gets canceled by his boss as a result.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9y6GojLfc6oBasically, you're going to be playing against the host in a game of combat by collecting 200 stars except you have less than 5 minutes to do it If you don't get 200 stars from Van and his minions on time... This is pretty much your ending and you have to try again.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TTp1biq004YAfter you beat GameShow mode, VanTastic is an unlocked and playable in Battle Mode.
As for beating the game and winning the prize...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EU7D7ulImxkEach contestant has their own prize, I just used Lucky as an example.
Speaking of... Here are all of the contestants in the game:
http://whacked.wikia.com/wiki/File:Whacked_Characters.png
Gameplay and Battle Mode:The gameplay itself is in 3rd person and it is fairly simple, it doesn't really require much skill. Even if you set the enemies on Whacked! being the hardest difficulty, you can still beat them, though there are moments where sometimes one or more of the AI players are pretty much bullshit hard regardless, but if you hit play again you can still win if you put effort into it. There are 6 game modes including one hidden one.
Fragfest - Kill the most players in X minutes to win the game! (max is 10 minutes, min is 3 minutes)
Combat - Collect X stars to win the game from either players or you pick them up from the level (max is 200, min is 50)
Dodgeball - Hit players with dodgeballs X times to be the last one standing to win (max is 12 lives, min is 4 lives)
Chicken - Collect the stars from X amount of chickens to win. (min and max numbers are the same as Combat)
King of the Hill - Stand in the green swirly areas that move and appear in the level to win, don't let other players on.
Grab 'n' Run - Similar to King of the Hill except you have to grab the trophy and run for x amount of time, other players will try to kill you, kill players that have the trophy, you cannot use any weapons when you are holding the trophy and you can't squash players. (time limit is the same as Combat)
Uber - Same thing as Combat except you collect 400 stars instead of 200 being the limit. This is a hidden feature in the game that you have to unlock using a code, which I will get to around the end.
The game is a lot more fun with friends in battle mode clearly, having 4 friends with you and 4 controllers means you won't have to set the difficulty and you're all playing against each other:
The game had Xbox Live for online play with 3 other people, but since the Original Xbox server got shut down in 2010, that is no longer the case.
I would get into weapons and explain what they all do, but there's a lot of weapons in the game and half the time I don't even remember all of their names. The baseball bat and the pitchfork are my favorite though. You also have Question marks which can give you a good thing or a bad thing for a short time. Good thing for example would be invulnerability where you are covered in full gold plated armor. The bad thing for example can be is you're set on fire, unless you have the cleaver as a weapon, then its a flaming cleaver making you even more dangerous. You also have the Exclamation Point which when picked up, each character has its own unique special power, except for the Burger, He doesn't have one, and picking one up will do nothing but break the game by having the Exclamation Point on top of you the entire time until someone else or AI picks it up again. Exclamation Points are only available in combat mode and Uber mode and spawn in the level at Random, the announcer will tell you if there is one, like so:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Txojuzj_DlASkip to 3:36 for the special power.
Commercials:Aside from the in game cut scenes during GameShow mode, the game also had its own commercials after you beat a level or stage, here are some examples of them:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K6MyWSlQQzAhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWaEfD3JovEhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5xAxDLJeDbMFinal VerdictIf the commercials didn't exist in this game I would have probably given it a 6/10 just on the gameplay alone. But for everything else that's in here, I give Whacked! a 7/10. Yes its mediocre, but its a game that I do personally enjoy. You may not like it and consider it to be a bad game, but its not for everybody, clearly. The game of course is a lot more fun with friends. Unfortunately I don't have many real life friends to play this game with so I just play against the AI whenever I'm bored and don't really feel like playing an FPS.
The genre of this type of game would be like Fuzion Frenzy, which would mean Whacked is a Party game.
Cheats and UnlockablesNote: DO NOT delete these profiles when you're done.
Enter the following profile names in GameShow mode to unlock all characters, levels and FMVs in the game:
AROUNDDAWORLD - All Arenas, Weapons and FMVs
DOUBLEDOUBLE - All Characters and FMVs
This is handy if you've already beaten GameShow mode and you don't want to do it all again.
If you want to play as the Burger from the Rehearsal mode, enter
FOODFIGHT as a profile name. Go to Battle Mode, Press the white button if you're on the Original Xbox or LB if you're on the 360 while highlighted on VanTastic, and it will reveal the Burger allowing you to select it. Charity, Otto, Toof and Eugene have food or drink alt skins with this as well.
To play Uber, create a new profile in GameShow Mode and enter
UBERHUNGARIAN, then go to Battle Mode, set it to combat, 200 stars, and press the white or LB button to change it to Uber, which is essentially combat mode but 400 stars to win the game:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFeoxDXB174Misc/Other stuff:
http://www.clowar.com/portfolio.phpWhacked is made using the Sprint Engine. There is also a concept character that didn't make it into the game during development, either that or it evolved to being Eugene seeing that he's green:
http://whacked.wikia.com/wiki/Envy
SoundtrackWhile the soundtrack isn't the holy grail of all music, I'd say its fairy decent:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPI0P04MjDIhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=secymM2Z8qIhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mIpPmvuuA_ohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6MTt26j9eoThat's my review, hopefully you guys enjoyed reading it, if not, well I'll know when this thread ends up being buried and forgotten with zero replies.
Oh, and you can get the game from here if you want a copy:
http://www.amazon.com/Whacked-xbox/dp/B00006JC44Wow the price is going up for this game. I wonder why? I got mine Factory Sealed for $22 2 years ago.
Alternatively if you have a Jtagged Xbox 360 or a softmodded Original Xbox with a really big hard drive, you can download the game from here:
http://www.theisozone.com/downloads/xbox/xbox-isos/whacked--part-1-of-3--usa/Its in 3 parts, and I would still recommend owning a copy of the game before doing this, because it technically isn't legal to download games you don't own, but this is at your own risk.
You can burn the iso to a DVD or get XisoManager to extract all the files from the iso itself so it can be copied to a softmodded Original Xbox with a large HDD.
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