My first ever party on Club Penguin was the Music Jam of 2008 - the classic original. It is currently tied for first on my list of the best parties of all time (the other one being the fantastic, but under-rated, Festival of Flight). The Music Jams that followed in 2009, 2010, and 2011 were repeats where little changed (and if it did, it meant removing a feature), but they still were fun, nostalgia filled reminders of that original introduction to CP. 2012's rebooted Ultimate Jam version was a bit disappointing (as little remained of the originals), but was really fine in retrospect.
So, you can imagine how excited I was when I found out that the Music Jam - after essentially a year off - was coming back, and, even better, returning to its original name! I mean, if it's called the Music Jam, it was almost certainly bringing back great parts of those golden years?! Right? Right?!
Yeah.....this party has tarnished the Music Jam name and makes the Ultimate Jam look like party of the year. There's a little fun to be had here....but only a tiny bit.
When I first heard about the Disney Channel stars that were coming I was disappointed greatly. Now, while I don't want to completely repeat what I said in my earlier takeover post, I do feel that the points I made in that blog post need to be brought up again briefly; while I don't mean to offend any of them, the four stars who came to Music Jam aren't big enough yet to warrant an appearance on Club Penguin and the content made by them isn't really enjoyed by all ages either. Additionally, with the Radio Disney plugs on Club Penguin's Twitter account and content from the station on the blog, it's hard not to look at this as a money-grabbing advertisement.
Cole Plante, the most obscure artist of them all, I would argue, did an alright job on his remix. However, the remix doesn't do a lot to stand out from the crowd; I don't listen to many remixes at all, and, yet, I've heard every trick he used in his work numerous times before. Also, with Cole being associated with Disney, his vocabulary should be cleaner, especially when you consider A) that Polo Field linked to his Twitter account and RT'd it a handful of times and B) that he is being introduced to people potentially younger than six.
Sabrina Carpenter's song isolated the entire male gender and isn't anything that I haven't heard before. *Forrest Gump voice* And that's all I have to say about that.
Zendaya's Replay song gets another shrug of the shoulder for something that I feel is more "been there, heard that" than anything. Also: Rocky's inclusion at the previous music party wasn't celebrated, so I don't see why Club Penguin felt it was a good idea to double-dip.
Violetta's inclusion is the most perplexing of them all, but that ties into a bigger problem I'll address in a moment.
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| This was the only art used to promote the party...and it's boring too. |
As for original Club Penguin music, this party doesn't serve it much justice. The first four Music Jams relied solely on wordless melodies for its music and the fifth one, the Ultimate Jam, did except for one Club Penguin written exception - The Party Starts Now. This party, instead, almost exclusively relies on its Disney performers. Regular rooms get by with ambiances (particularly ones from summer events) - not real music - and player created SoundStudio music. The only exception is Cadence's performance of her alright song Best Day Ever.
The rooms at this party, in case you have somehow avoided the barrage of angry tweets, are quite possibly the most disappointing ensemble to ever appear at a Club Penguin event. The rooms on the cruise ship look nice, if not a little simple. In fact, one of the only things that I can praise Club Penguin about comes in here; unlike the Prehistoric Party and other off-island events where the rooms were generic and nondescript, this party had a clear purpose for each room. There was the maintenance room, the lobby, the dining room, the front hangout, the pool, and the stage. The path to places was easy to memorize and is now as natural to me as the regular island.
Meanwhile, the Town was a boring rehash and the Dock was pretty plain. As many have said, all of this just seems to stem from laziness, as years ago, the whole island (aka more than eight rooms) was decorated. Even bringing back classic rooms - something that involves little effort - just for something to look at would have made me a lot more happy with this party. Even though Club Penguin room designs have evolved since then, Club Penguin brought back the previous design of the Coffee Shop for a previous party, so it obviously doesn't bother them to break from their current artistic style with old decorations. Adding old rooms would have been an easy fix that would have bumped the party up a number or two on my rating scale.
On another note, I really thought this party was the next universally loved Summer Jam. Why? Well, that was another takeover with a similar concept that everyone was expecting to be horrible. But, more importantly, Club Penguin was finally...finally bringing a feature that had been requested for years, and even more aggressively in the past few months - night and day on Club Penguin. It seemed like a huge win for a game that is often accused of ignoring what its players want completely. It was foolproof!
Yeah.......no.
Night and day is an idea that sounds great on paper and seems like something that can't be done wrong for a company with good technology at their fingertips. But, the team did everything they could do wrong.
First of all, as everyone and their brother has commented on, this day and night function is only available on the cruise ship and not on the whole island. This is a shame because numerous people want this to be a permanent feature and instead it's not even in the regular rooms just for a test drive. But this also means something else: we get to see day change in a whopping 3.1 rooms (that tiny window in the dining room doesn't count as a full room!)! To add to that, the changing of night to day is not organic; while there are several different colors to ease through the transition, the color does not gradually change like in real life; it just blinks and changes to a new shade. This is something that degrades the value of the trick.
The items at this party proved to be problems as well. Many of them are exclusively targeted at girls (not to mention the somewhat neutral ones that have names that makes them less attractive for boys). Additionally, I don't find them pleasing to the eye; basically all of them are hipster or punk rock items that I collected but will almost certainly never click on to wear. Cadence and the Penguin Band coming back with old backgrounds is a letdown and the backgrounds given out by the other Disney performers - while the most neutral and well designed new items at the entire party - will lose relevance the second the cruise ship disappears from the Dock, as the performers do not have huge fanbases. And, finally here, the whole "come back each day for a new performance or new items" gag is boring and has run its course; this repetitive feature detracts from the party.
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| One of the little things I miss from previous years |
Speaking of the mascots, let's talk about something I usually brush over in my party reviews: meetable characters. I, like many, feel that the feature of meeting mascots at parties has gone downhill over the past few years. The reason I bring this up here is that I believe that this is the lowest it has ever been.
While bringing the Penguin Band back into the fold (*Anna voice*) for the first time in forever is a welcome sight, the members from the band are dreadfully boring and not people I care about meeting multiple times on a high level. Aside from Franky, all of the members are generic guys who truly have no distinct personality, unlike every single other mascot. Even people that aren't meetable have more personality than them - think about Dot, Jet Pack Guy, and Rory. And to think....they were the first meetable mascots to be created after the original one - Rockhopper!
Now, to understand the other reason I think this a new low, you have to think about the previous low: the Ultimate Jam of 2012. That party gave you the stamps of all of the members of the Penguin Band and Cadence just for watching them perform. However, you still had to meet them to get their background and add them to your Friends List. Also, you needed to track down CeCe and Rocky to get them on your Friends List (which, it turns out, had no future use other than bragging rights) and receive their background.
Now, to the present party: the only mascots that you can meet are the four members of the band and Cadence. Apparently, you can again get their stamps by watching them perform, but this time, you can also get their backgrounds by clicking on them. That means the only reason that you need to track them down is to add them to your Friends List for the future. This pretty dull objective becomes kind of a pointless idea when you consider the fact that the next time the five are around, you won't need their stamps, and, on the slim chance that they - particularly the band - have new backgrounds, you'll just need to click on them when they perform - which they probably will - in order to get it.
So, little need to meet + three to four (out of five) uninteresting, dull characters + numerous crowded and laggy meetup times getting in the way = a boring, unneeded feature.
And you thought you weren't going to do math this summer...
This all brings me to my three biggest gripes about this party, if you still have the will to read this college essay. My first is that this party doesn't know what to be. Is it a water-sea party with a cruise ship? Is it a summer party, with a pool and summer town to boot? No.....it's just a strange mixture of forced elements.
Now, I have never and will never claim that Club Penguin is a game of logic, but a music cruise is such a silly thought and a foreign concept when compared to our world. The music is just background noise compared to the cruise and summer themes. As several people said on Twitter before I had the chance to say it, this party is basically just a cruise ship with music notes stuck on it (which, I may add, were somewhat creatively placed but just plain stupid).
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Secondly, nothing remains from the original four Music Jams. While the Ultimate Jam took away a lot of features, there was still stuff left over for the benefit of older penguins. Now, even though this was a prime opportunity to bring back old things, nothing came back. Nothing! This Music Jam is nothing like the rest of them.
My final big problem is perhaps the most severe sin a party can make and it ties back to that Violetta problem exactly eighteen paragraphs ago. This party does not appeal to everyone - and, hold on, there's a ton to say here.
First, again, all of the guests are related to Disney Channel projects that don't appeal to many older players. However, there's a much deeper side to it than that.
First, there's the language barrier problem that Club Penguin has never, ever had to deal with before. Violetta singing in Spanish on English servers made me pretty angry like everyone else, but people who play Club Penguin in other languages had it even worse. Only three other times in Club Penguin history have songs with words appeared in the game - I've Been Delayed being in igloos, The Party Starts Now appearing at 2012's Ultimate Jam, and Mack and Brady performing in 2013. Those times, English players were not affected in any way as far as comprehension is concerned. I also believe that foreign players were shielded as well; the first example never appeared on foreign servers and the last two situations had translated material in other languages, to the best of my knowledge.
Skip forward to today, and we see that English players have it easy. Of all of the songs, only Best Day Ever was translated and at least three of the four other ones (I'm not sure about the remix) were in another language for the foreign players (unless you are a Spanish speaking player of course, which gives you back the Violetta one).
Then there's the country barrier. Putting aside what people like, virtually no one in any English speaking country knows who Violetta is. In the same way, other countries don't know about Zendaya, Sabrina, or Cole, either. The only other time this happened to foreign languages was when CeCe and Rocky forced their way into our lives.
Meanwhile, while the each track is from a different genre, there isn't a performer for everyone. When you look at the mascots at the party, you'll count five males to four females. That, in and of itself seems pretty even. But if you consider the band as one person because of how two-dimensional they all are, it's two boys and four girls. Then, consider this: the Penguin Band members play instruments and don't sing, so they might as well not exist. Plus, Cole remixes songs and doesn't sing, with the men in said remix being garbled so they're basically robots. That means they're are four women who perform and exactly zero men. Plus, three female Disney stars to one male guest isn't much of a ratio, either.
Now, I'm not saying guys can't enjoy songs sung by women; I'm just saying that the variety in songs is stiffled when a gender - half of the world's population - isn't represented.
And, so, with twenty-six paragraphs of analysis under my belt, I'm now going to lay down judgement.
I hate to be harsh on things when the people who are behind them could potentially read the review, but there's no way around this, I have to be frank. This entire year of "meh" parties has been a buildup to this....
Music Jam 2014 is the worst Club Penguin party I have ever attended.
Yes, that's right. The first ever Music Jam is my favorite party of all time. This newest one is my least favorite of all time.
Now, I am not particularly angry at the team for the product we received. While there are some things I know they could have done better, I'm sure that it's not all them. I think Disney nudged Club Penguin and told them what they wanted implemented into a Music Jam. The team just had to go along with it. Hey, maybe there are even employee bonuses involved when CP listens to what the corporation wants?
But, to close this unnecessarily lengthy article, I have to say that, despite the sins it committed, I want another entry in this series. Just because of one dud, Club Penguin shouldn't just stop here. Coming back next year with a rebooted party - or a return to a more classic, '08-'11 feel - could mean redemption for this party. I just hope Club Penguin doesn't shy away just because something they tried didn't work on a tremendous scale. Because, if there isn't another try, this is a horrible series finale.
Score: 2/10
As Billybob would say, Waddle On!
- Chillin43
*puts on sensei hat* Oh my
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