Bad Time Party: My Reflections on Inspector Gadget — MAD Time Party
There is no real reason why I would ever put this game on my TV screen and yet I have. When the game was first announced, I read a comment saying “they’re still making PS2 games I see” as an obvious dig at how it looks like the shovelware of the PS2/Wii era. I could have told you that the MAD Time Party was simply a collection of minigames that were shamelessly based on existing Mario Party minigames, but I have played the game now and I can confirm.
I loaded up the game and went into New Game assuming this would be how my wife and I could play. I then entered a loading screen that lasted over a minute that said both LOADING and SAVING in opposite corners. When the game finally began there was a tutorial for only one player that taught me how to walk and jump. There were a lot of mandatory interactions and all it would be for is a flimsy story to get me to play the 16 different minigames. I didn’t stick around to explore Metro City and instead hopped back out to try the Challenges mode where you can actually play the minigames with up to four players.
Everyone gets to pick their own Inspector Gadget from different eras I assume. I picked Pirate Gadget and my wife picked 1800s Top Hat Gadget to go against the AI Viking Gadget and AI Default Inspector Gadget. Then you can pick how you want the minigames to be dished up to you and finally you play. In these minigames you’ll see a lot of familiar options such as
- random chance games where if you pick the wrong wire to cut then you explode.
- float through the sky to grab points but don’t pick the bowser symbol!
- that one where you have to flash the flashlight on the chain chomp in the alley way as close as you can without it chomping you
- Fall Guys Tail Tag
- mashing the A button a lot
- hot potato with a bomb
- Fall Guys Jump Showdown
- counting
- Clefairy Says
That’s over half of the games I just described to you. The video I clipped above for this shows all of the games and it is under 20 minutes long. You have to pay about $30 to get the opportunity to play this, but even $10 is too much. I can’t speak to much more than this as far as what the game entails. It’s simply a bad collection of bad minigames that hopes you remember Inspector Gadget fondly enough to buy this. Skip this one.
