Those dog-days of summer are often filled with excursions to local
fairs, carnivals and amusement parks. Many of us have
experienced these wonders of modern marketing, where a hot-dog
and soda will run you nearly $5 and the merchants can legally
peddle their wares at a modest 600% inflated price. Or for us young
lads out with our lady friends, $2 for three shots at a small plush
bear seems more than reasonable; though it generally takes
several attempts to win. Sandbox Studios has attempted to
recreate this summer phenomenon with their latest title: Carnival
Games; Their attempt failed.
The graphics are far from visually stunning, unless you fall into the
6-12 year age group. Though I would agree that for this title they
are adequate, a lot more work could have been put into the
development of this game.
The games themselves are definately reminiscent of a carnival. All
your favourites are there:
Shoot A Star: Remove all traces of the red star by shooting it
with the machine gun.
Hoop Zone: Shoot as many baskets as you can in 30 seconds.
Dunk A Clown: Dunk the clown by tossing a ball at the target.
Whack A Weasel: Hit the weasel with the mallet as many times
as you can in 30 seconds.
Milk Bottle Toss: Toss the two balls at the bottles
Pop A Balloon: Throw the three darts at the balloons.
Ring A Pirate: Toss your three rings on the pirate's sword.
All the games come with two difficulty settings: Easy and Hard.
Easy is too easy and Hard isn't much harder. The objective of all
these games is to win prizes. Prizes come in three sizes: Small,
Medium and Large. The only intersting aspect of the prizes is that
Carnival Games offers the option of printing a copy of your prize,
giving you something physical to show for your victory over the
crooked carny's booth. The sound effects are weak at best and the
game lacks background music of any kind
Though through the eight games you will experience differing
levels of difficulty, it won't be due to the difficulty settings (they
only control speed of play). The games aren't very challenging
save for the Shoot-A-Star. Shoot-A-Star involves shooting out a
target with a machine gun. It's harder than it sounds kids. Other
than that, you should always be able to walk away with a large
prize.
After thouroghly testing this game (approx. 20 minutes) I got bored
of every aspect of this title. Besides the Shoot-A-Star games that
pissed me off royally (constitutes 18 minutes of the total 20) I
wouldn't recommend this title even as a joke.
By: 
