Microsoft went straight to the source for party games for Fuzion Frenzy 2, developer Hudson Soft (who make the Mario Party games for Nintendo), so it seemed like a can’t lose situation. Unfortunately, when you take out the lovable mascot characters and insert a crew of no-name wannabes into the same formula, the minigame heavy gameplay just doesn’t have quite the same flair. Some of the minigames can be fun, but there are far more negatives here than positives.
Quick Hits
- Title: Fuzion Frenzy 2
- Platform: Xbox 360
- Publisher: Microsoft
- Developer: Hudson Soft
- ESRB: “E” for Everyone
- Genre: Minigame: party
- Pros: Some fun minigames; easy achievements
- Cons: Card system sucks the fun out of it; annoying host; some minigames are just horrible
Gameplay
Microsoft
Fuzion Frenzy 2 is sort of a hard game to review because your experience is really dependent on what particular minigames you play and who you play with. Playing with friends locally or on Xbox Live is absolutely the way to go and if you don’t have friends to play with Fuzion Frenzy 2 isn’t worth your time. Well, you could play it just for the 675 easy achievement points you can get from playing by yourself, but other than that it is best to avoid. The AI isn’t all that great, the minigames aren’t really all that fun when you subtract the “party” from the party game equation, and the presentation won’t floor you.
If you do have friends to play with, the game gets quite a bit better. When you can trash talk and sabotage your friends in the minigames, it can be rather exciting and fun. Unfortunately, the fun starts to dry up rather quickly because there just aren’t all that many minigames that are fun to play. You’ll cut the roster of 40 games down to about 20 or less that are actually fun to play, and then after that it can only go downhill because no one wants to play the same handful of minigames over and over again. You’ll have about an hour of fun with Fuzion Frenzy 2.
Graphics and Sound
You can’t really fault the presentation in Fuzion Frenzy 2 because it is just a collection of minigames so your expectations shouldn’t be too high. Everything looks fairly decent, and you’ll occasionally see some nifty special effects, but it won’t blow you away.
The sound, on the other hand, is pretty bad all around. There is a horrible, horrible, annoying “Game Show Host” guy that has yammer on in between games and will taunt you while you are playing. Luckily, you can just skip over everything he says between games, but he pops up often enough and is annoying enough even in small doses that he really sucks all of the fun out of it.
Bottom Line
Microsoft
In the end, Fuzion Frenzy 2 will go down in history as a disappointment. A lot of it has to do with the simple fact that you can’t just use the Mario Party formula with any normal characters. The appeal of Mario Party has mostly to do with the great cast of characters and the nostalgic feeling they give people. The minigames aren’t all that good, and in fact, many of the same ones appear here in Fuzion Frenzy 2, but you play MP because you like the characters. Fuzion Frenzy 2 doesn’t have any of that nostalgic, warm, ooey gooey feeling, so you see the experience for what it really is. Bland, boring, and repetitive. Ultimately, Fuzion Frenzy 2 isn’t worth much more than a rental. You can pick up some easy gamerscore points, and have about an hour of fun in multiplayer. Not worth a purchase.
