How does one describe the Pirate Party of 2014? It's not a great party, but it's not an awful one, either. It's not interesting, but it's not boring. It's small, though. It's unnecessarily drawn out, too. It's essentially the Frozen Party, Part Four.
The rooms that are decorated are nice. The Dock is slightly cramped and lags like crazy on my computer, but otherwise, I really like every single other one. What I don't like is the number that are decorated. Will Club Penguin ever decorate a room again if it doesn't directly play into a quest? That's what Frozen parties 1-3 seemed to tell us and this one continues that trend.
The music at this party is fine. None of it is very memorable, but none of it is bad. The same can be said for the items. Do you sense a theme here?
The story at this party is a step down from the still middling Halloween Party. Rockhopper's ship crashing is an unoriginal repeat that doesn't hold the same urgency or weight that it did the first time around. At least the crabs storming the island is a new twist, though, not counting the newspapers, we only see three in each of the rooms. Hardly the dramatic, pillaging takeover, huh?
The conclusion of said story is OK, I guess. Using storyboards to wrap up the story is a small detail, but it's a nice touch. The final battle isn't much of a climax, which brings me to....
The day-by-day crab battle at this party is really this event's biggest issue. Doing it once was boring enough, but *Professor Horace Slughorn (of Harry Potter) voice* SEVEN TIMES?! The first six were carbon copies of each other (aside from the lame accessory switch each time for the crabs) and the seventh was literally the exact same experience with a big crab. Additionally, the room took forever to load on my computer despite its seeming simplicity.
Sword-fighting with other players was just fine. Other parties have done the exact same thing multiple times over, but the feature is not overused to the point of puffle intolerance. Each sword having a different sound and action is pretty nice, too, but, again, that's nothing we haven't seen before. Since the rules are not easy to remember like Card-Jitsu (those had a logic behind them, whereas the sword actions don't), it's not really, really fun and the charm wears off after a while. If the upcoming Star Wars Rebels party uses this feature with its lightsabers, I won't be so nice. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't mildly amused by penguins fighting, though.
And that's it. I've written more about one room parties than this.
I guess that's my entire point. Look at everything above. The few things that are new are lackluster or too small and everything else is territory we've already traveled back and forth through. Add a new puffle and this would be Club Penguin's Greatest Hits....."greatest" and "hits" being used loosely.
We've seen the "come back each day for a new challenge in another room that will take at most thirty seconds and won't offer any sort of stimulation or enjoyment and we'll give non-members a new free item and members a new free item" before. We've seen lightsaber/sword dueling before. We've seen "hey, we're going to only decorate a few outside rooms and no interior rooms and they'll all be on the map, k?" before. We've seen Rockhopper's ship crash before. We all have that Rockhopper background you're giving away YET AGAIN because you didn't want to make a new one. Way back when, a person would walk into a party and get to see something new. This is all too safe.
What's up, Club Penguin Team? Do you think children these days don't have the time to go through everything you offer so you A) cut it down and B) split it up? Do you think kids don't like change? Have employees been fired and you have more work now? Are you too busy doing whatever this is? News Flash: kids have short attention spans and they'll leave if you bore them.
I might have really enjoyed this party if I still was just beginning Club Penguin. This might have been the highlight of each day of my week if I was still uncovering every secret CP had to offer.....if I was in awe of the amount of stuff to do. But, that's not me. I have turned every stone......I know every secret. Why am I still here? New content. This is not enough to keep me content. This is not enough to excite me. This is not enough.
If you think I'm being hard on the team - or that I have been tough on them for months - then please hear me out here; I am only judging Club Penguin up to the level of what they have given us before. I'm not expecting a puzzle where you have to work for hours to piece together forty pieces of shredded paper. No, that's not what Club Penguin is. What I want is PSA style mini games.....games like the Night Club electricity puzzle or the Boiler Room pipe challenge, where you had to spend a couple minutes to solve the puzzle and where you had to use your brain a bit. I have nothing against any of the team members; they may have perfectly good reasons for producing parties the way they do. All I'm doing is telling Disney that there is more potential.
....At least there wasn't a new puffle....
Score: 6/10
Fantastic review!
ReplyDelete