I was unusually busy the week that the party began. Because of this, I was not able to log on and look at anything until late Sunday, four full days after it had begun. During that time, I stayed away from guides and screenshots, but I did see short reviews on my Twitter timeline. Words like "great" and "amazing" were being thrown around. "Club Penguin's made up for the rest of the year," said a few. This all added to my excitement greatly.
But when I logged on, I found little to cheer about. Make no mistake: this party is far better than last month's Music Jam; it's a takeover actually based on something lots of people of all ages like, all players can understand every word that is put on screen, and the features are far less infuriating. Still, this is not an iconic party. It's a fixer upper.
Let's start with some positives. First of all, the costumes and promotional artwork are top-notch work. While certain sprite designs are questionable, the actual traditional designs perfectly compliment the characters. I also enjoyed the vast variety of costumes; Club Penguin created something for every single major character aside from Mr. "It's Wesselton."
That being said, I found the early release of such items in Penguin Style a bit questionable. First of all, releasing them early and not in a party catalog like is traditionally done greatly detracted from the hype behind the party, and, the stuff that could actually be done. Second of all, there were no new or even old costumes for Anti-Frozen players. Why not being back the snowflake costume or some other reindeer for something more to look at? And, on a side note, does Disney mandate that all property based items are front and center? There are never any hidden items in the catalogs with Disney based costumes.
Items at the party were a little less worthy of praise. On their own they were actually really good; with all their references to the movie and neat designs, I'd argue that they were the best party items since the Muppets World Tour back in March. However, with the main costumes coming two weeks before the party and the furniture items (which were pretty nice and referential) coming seven days before the start, these felt like B-Class items - not things that should be saved for last.
Another failed idea also came in here: the Ice Palace. Now, the actual igloo on its own is great; it's got a few cool references to the movie and it was given away to everyone. However, some problems lie here that don't make it so...cool.
To begin with, giving it to everyone is nice, but also has a few issues. Won't every nonmember use this igloo, making for repetitive igloos? Also: this igloo is more or less holiday themed; people will only really want it A) during this party and B) from December-Febuary.
Secondly, this igloo was the most important item left to be given away at the party itself. In fact, it was promoted in most marketing materials as the big draw of the party. Because of this, why have it as the first item you can get? Why not have it as one of the last items in the quest along with the snowman puffles to create some buildup and make us actually do something? Better yet, if you're going to make us wait a week for Elsa's Ice Palace, why make us wait for some simple furniture items that really aren't that inventive? Why not give those to us on day one and make us wait a week for the free, grand igloo? Also: why am I not head of the idea team at HQ?
The rooms at this party are another good-bad combo. First, there's the good: these rooms are put together quite well, with lots of nods to moments in the movie; even the rooms that were created with just Club Penguin in mind turned out pretty good. However, there lies a few problems in some of the designs; the Lighthouse being a rock mound seemed like a weird decision when there were other ways that that feature could have been incorporated and the Dock was horribly cramped and generally messy looking.
More importantly was the amount of rooms decorated. Eight rooms is not acceptable in any large party, but especially not this one. There was so much more potential for creativity. Why not have an entire Arendelle mansion instead of one room cramming as much in as possible? Why not have a party room with a more faithful and detailed representation of the rock mounds? Why not give the trading post an entire room instead of just a little section of the Forest? Why not have a journey to Elsa's ice palace, where we could jump over the same cliff that Kristoff and Anna did? Why not have an entrance room in the Ice Palace instead of a singular room? Now, I realize this all is really wishful thinking, but this party desperately needed something else to see and do. There was so much potential for something really special and instead we got....this.
Another thing that bothered me was how these rooms blended with regular Club Penguin. Seeing regular rooms in the background of some areas detracted from the overall appeal of the design because of the contrast. The specially designed map also looks ugly with its clashing art styles.
The music at this party had its good and bad moments, too. The main theme is very nice, the instrumental In Summer theme was alright, the ambiance of the Ice Palace was pretty boring (I'll discuss Let It Go a little later). There's not a lot variety in the sounds between the eight rooms, which, once again, is a true shame.
The features at this party had great and horrible parts, too. I loved the referential heart emote melts ice feature and the fact that we had a chance to alter a room's appearance. However, there were some issues. The platform was picky about where exactly you stood to unfreeze a section of the room. It would have been far more fun if you could run around with the emote and unfreeze things. I also didn't like the inclusion of the recharge feature and I felt the snowball was a bit particular about where you threw it. I did like how only sections of the room froze with each snowball and loved the change of the Coffee Shop sign from "Coffee" to "Iced Coffee." This, along with the feature itself, was a really fresh and creative concept, which I feel we don't get from CP anymore in this age of special igloo lists and simple, repetitive quests at EVERY party.
Speaking of simple, repetitive quests, that's exactly what this party had to offer. Though I'm thankful they were all released at once and not on a day by day basis, the snowflake quests were boring, elementary inclusions which really detracted from the party. The snowflakes were too large and were placed into too obvious of places. Making this worse, we had to do the exact same thing multiple times and Club Penguin hyped it up as some big challenge when it wasn't at all. At least this time, the items up for grabs were at least a little intriguing.
Puffles aren't my best friends, however, the inclusion of the snowman puffle here was fine with me. A four month gap between new puffle content seems far more fair on Club Penguin's part than usual and if they can keep that up, I think things will be alright. All feelings for CP's puffle plans aside, the Olaf puffle is designed very well and I like how it vaguely sounds like Olaf himself, though it would have been nice if its puffle digging items were Frozen themed and the admission that they are created and not found is kind of weird. Somehow I got stuck with two of them when I only "ordered" one, which annoys me to an irrationally high extent.
The transformations at this party were pretty cool. The characters look very close to their movie counterparts and all of their movements are pretty fluid.
The storyline for this party is just as you would assume: vague and uninspired. Instead of using the classic Cadence story of, "Hey, I know some famous people from a nondescript other island who would totally LOVE this party!" which has been used four times before, the team felt that they should mix it up a bit and instead used the brand new Aunt Arctic story of, "Hey, I know some famous people from a nondescript other island who would totally LOVE this party!" This is such a copout and not interesting at all, especially when this plot was used just last month.
Once Elsa, Anna, and Olaf got here (apparently the other boys had to stay home), things didn't get a lot more interesting. You only hear from them twice: Elsa talks to you when you visit her palace and one of them talks to you when you first log in (they are all on screen and one of them is talking to you.....who is anyone's guess). Their brief little interviews and such in the newspaper were also pretty boring. Why not use these loved characters for something actually worthy?
Herbert's inclusion was also useless. He was mentioned at the beginning of the party as the person making things warmer, but the reference didn't go anywhere and just ran....cold. This was simply Club Penguin having no clue what to do with the EPF and forcing us to remember that their characters still exist. It's boring, it's lazy....it's not fun.
One of this party's biggest brags was that it was going to be available on the Club Penguin app. I looked at it briefly, but found it to be very slow and unresponsive per the usual. I am very afraid that this move to mobile will make all parties become much smaller to compensate and I still think porting all of the rooms to mobile is the worst idea Club Penguin has ever had.
Since Frozen is built around princesses, it was very possible that the party would lean more towards the interests of girls. This is one area where Club Penguin did something truly good; the items are well balanced between the genders and some of them can be appreciated by both. The rooms also stay away from being to princessy, even in their iced form.
My final note is about the big buildup of the party: Elsa's performance. This part of the party, while a better conclusion than April's horrible Puffle Gala, was still a very bad feature, rooted from a pretty good idea. Along with some of the issues stated above, this final feature had pointless buildup and horrible payoff. While Elsa's background is really nice, her performance is really not. Apparently, in the sequel to Frozen, we will find out that Elsa has also let go of the shame she had for interpretative dance. The wordless event, with no need of a timer, was built up as a performance at every turn........but it is not one at all.
To close, the Frozen Party is merely a skeleton of a party. The line has been blurred between mini-parties and large parties and it is quite annoying. Through just a handful of blog posts and one video, nearly all of the party's contents - be it rooms, items, transformations, or other features - were revealed.....and that's not even counting the numerous leaks that let out the rest. To add to this, the best items were released before the party began, leading to a hallow and unexciting launch.
Should we permanently lower our expectations now?
Score: 4/10
As Billybob would say, Waddle On!
- Chillin43
EXCELLENT review! So excellent that I +1'd it. :) You never fail to include a good coverage of the party's aspects and make some very interesting points out of the immediately obvious. :D
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