The early days of reality television were embarrassing for all of us. Actually, no, reality television is still embarrassing for us. Every time I visit my parents, where they still have cable, there’s some show about detailing cars or antiquing that is on TV. Fear Factor was something special, though. I don’t mean that in a good way.
Fear Factor was a game show that was advertised as a show about people overcoming fear to both humiliate themselves and win money. I’m pretty sure people just tuned in to watch the contestants eat bugs, which was almost invariably what they did in the middle of the three events. But there are so many times you can air people cringing as they eat insects before even the least discerning audience gets bored, so the series only ran from 2001-2006. I say “only” because there are reality shows based around cooking that are still running today.
During this time, there was a Game Boy Advance game released in 2004 called Fear Factor Unleashed. Upon discovering this, my first question was, “how?” followed closely by “why?” Now that I’ve played it, I have the answer to the first question, but I’m not sure there will ever be an adequate explanation for the second. It’s probably just money.
The AI’s turn
Fear Factor Unleashed follows the show’s formula of having six contestants compete in three challenges to see who survives to the end. There are twelve mini-games that get shuffled into the mix. Most of these involve being tied up or eating bugs, which are both things I am already very experienced in, so that’s possibly why this game was such a cinch for me.
The conformity to the show’s structure is one of the most aggravating aspects of the game. This is mostly because it tries to show each of the AI-controlled contestants trying to complete the minigames. I can hardly think of something I desire to do less. You can skip the performance, but the game always loads into them, and when you skip them, it makes you click through the results. It takes way too long, and there is no option to fully turn off AI turns. I cannot express how little I care about how well Sassy and Snake overcome their fears.
Well, okay, on the other hand, it’s helpful to see the games played if you’ve never done them before. However, I’m not sure it’s necessary to watch them five times. I can’t imagine anyone wanting to. You’d have to be an intensely boring person.
Even if you did want to watch them, the success of the AI is always pre-planned. So much so that there’s one particular mini-game that has you driving a dune buggy on a track suspended high above the desert, and the computer-controlled players just couldn’t do it. Ever. They always die at the first obstacle. You watch them fall to the desert floor, a cloud of dust and a crater being the only remaining indication that they ever existed. And yet, Fear Factor Unleashed just says “Good job, Peaches! You completed the track in, let’s say, 2:40.”
They couldn’t even be bothered programming AI that could complete their challenge, so they just cheated their way around it. I expect better from the developer of the 2006 classic Hannah Montana for the DS.
Fine dining
There are 12 games in all, and each of them are so simple they’d embarrass Mario Party. They also get pretty creative with what they make the contestants do. In the show, they’re never really in danger. Even the more out-there stunts like, I don’t know, playing piano while dangling from a helicopter, are done using a lot of impressive safety gear.
The developers didn’t want to deal with all that reality, so they came up with some spectacularly stupid minigames. This includes piloting a helicopter through narrow passageways and the aforementioned high-altitude go-karting. I should probably not speculate too much on what challenges were actually in the show because I really never watched very much of it. Maybe they did tie people to train tracks and motivate them with a speeding locomotive.
Two of the games involve solving the exact same lock puzzle, so I’m not sure if they should even count separately. The two eating games are entirely different, however. One involves carrying maggots from one end of the room to another using only your mouth. The other has you dunk your head into a bucket of bugs, masticating them, and then swallowing them as three separate actions with mysteriously unresponsive controls.
Other games incorporate the fury of nature, such as one where piranhas nibble on your tits if you look too delicious. In another, an eagle will attack you just because it wants you to plummet to your death.
Keep it up!
You might wonder how the “fear” aspect of Fear Factor Unleashed factors into this since it’s not actually your own mouth getting crammed full of cockroaches, and therefore there’s no real stress. There’s a bar at the bottom of your screen during every minigame that you have to keep balanced with the shoulder buttons while you complete whatever task you’re doing. Your character even has an assortment of skills you pump points into at the beginning and a specific phobia that supposedly gets factored in. I could absolutely not tell what difference these made whatsoever. So, it’s a neat idea, but I’m not sure it was ever even implemented.
Speaking of your character, you actually create them at the beginning, but regardless of how you set them up, they’re always some fit person in their underwear. I’m not sure why they’re invariable half-clothed, but I’m guessing it’s a kink thing. We don’t kink shame here at the Destructoid Institute of Critiquing Kusoge.
I also feel like I need to note the voiced comments that are made in reaction to what you’re doing. They’re essentially just “you’re doing great” or comments about the fear creeping in. These are really annoying (the only option the game provides is to turn them off), but sometimes they’re just hilariously not in sync with what’s going on. I watched the AI eat bugs once, and while they were barfing on the floor, the voice said, “Keep it up!” Oh, geez. Is that a kink thing, too?
Speaking of kinks, there’s hotseat multiplayer for up to six players. That’s a lot of suffering!
Kink thing
What’s amusing about this production is that usually, when I’m looking at shovelware, I’ll drill down into the credits to see who has moved onto bigger and better things. In this case, pretty much no one has aside from the audio/music guy Steve Szczepkowski, who became the audio director for the Eidos Montreal Deus Ex games. Everyone else has continued to make shovelware. The creative director seems to exclusively make shovelware. It’s incredible.
To be fair, Fear Factor Unleashed was a needed palate cleaner. I feel like I’ve been appreciating the kusoge I play too much recently. Thankfully, shovelware tends to be a pretty reliable source of unlikable kusoge.
However, Fear Factor Unleashed manages to be, at least, innocuous. Unless your thumbs have been replaced by breakfast sausages, you can probably complete all the difficult levels within, like, 45 minutes. Unless you’re watching the AI’s turn. None of the minigames are outright painful to play, but you’re going to spend more time navigating the menus than actually playing them. And that’s too bad because I could have made a pun like, “The only fear that this game has unleashed is the fact that we’ve hit the bottom of the dumpster and now have to live with the cockroaches.”
