It looks I've gotten myself into a nice little pattern with reviewing Wii games.
I started with a typical licensed Wii title, then moved on to an actual game. Well, now it's time to get back to those super fun, always top-quality licensed titles. This week, we have ourselves yet another licensed video game based on another reality show. But this time is going to be a little bit different. Unlike the Amazing Race, which I had only some familiarity with, I've watched a ton of Survivor. I wouldn't call myself a super fan, but I'm definitely a fan and I've seen most of the seasons. Reality shows get a lot of flak for being staged and unoriginal, but remember, Survivor was kind of the OG of the genre. It's crazy that what started as a one-time social experiment has turned into a game show that's run for more than 40 seasons across three decades. I guess it makes sense, stick 20 randos on an island, deny them food, pit them against each other in various games of luck and/or skill and watch the sparks fly. I had heard this game was terrible, but I had to give it a try in spite of that. It's not like the idea of Survivor as a video game is doomed from the start and I like the show, so why not?
Look, Survivor isn't a good game by any stretch of the imagination. I probably could have told you that before I even turned it on. But I have to say I've definitely played worse. At least it's an actual game, unlike The Amazing Race that was a glorified collection of menus. What it does isn't that interesting, but it at least it actually does it correctly. I guess it would have been easier said than done, but I would have liked the game to follow the show a little more closely. Much of the social element wasn't included and the challenges far different than anything you would actually see on TV. But there was at least some attempt to make the game feel like the show and add a bit of interactivity via Wii-fit board compatibility. Also, before I go too much farther, I just want to let everyone know in advance that this review will absolutely be filled with references to Survivor, because I just got done binge watching the seasons that are available on streaming and because why would I not?
Anyway, let's get started with the graphics, which are...not great. I know the Wii wasn't exactly a powerhouse, but it was capable of far more than what it showed here. Everything has a muddy look to it, and it looks like they ported a 6th gen game onto a 7th gen console. All the players have this weird, soulless look to them and their movements are stiff and robotic. They all perpetually look like they just got blindsided at tribal council the night after getting completely hammered at a reward challenge. The environments at least look like locations where they might film Survivor, but they lack detail and are blurrier than Amanda Kimmel's backside. The sound is okay, they at least have the show's theme song and actually had Jeff Probst record dialogue. However, the sound during the game is very minimalist and they didn't do a good job of matching up Jeff's text with the movement of his mouth. Getting back to the graphics for a second, Probst looks less like himself and more like Handsome Jack from Borderlands. It's like they had the brains tribe from Khao Rong do the voice recording but had the howler monkeys that were all over the jungle in season 1 sync it into the game.
Gameplay wise, they did at least try and make the game follow the same format as the show, you have a reward challenge followed by an immunity challenge, with the losing team going to tribal council. Each member of your tribe will have an advantage in certain activities and the reward challenges will provide you additional advantages. There is no voting, the winning player gets to pick someone on the losing team to vote off, usually based on their skills in challenges. That's probably the biggest disappointment here, there's no social game at all. I guess it would have been difficult, but you could have done some at-camp mini games, some dialogue trees, some first- or third-person exploration, stuff like that. But instead, you just get a bunch of minigames. This game would have been a prime candidate for a deep character creation suite, but instead you are limited to a preset selection of survivor characters. I'm pretty sure these are supposed to be actual Survivor players, or at least named after them. I guess that kind of looks like Sandra Diaz-Twine? Maybe that's Cirie Fields? I could kind of see how that might be Earl Cole? I wonder if any of these people got paid to have their sort-of likenesses appear in this game. My guess would be no.
But the biggest problem here is the controls. For better or worse, all of these different minigames have completely different control schemes. Some of them work well, but a lot of them just don't. It almost makes it worse that sometimes the controls are tight and other times they are completely broken. If you are taking part in any challenge where you have to paddle a raft or canoe, just put your controller down because there's absolutely no way you are beating the computer. You might be the Colby Donaldson of video games, but these things will make you feel more like War Dog. And did you think you could fast forward through these challenges, or that they would end once the computer finished? Think again. I guess I was wrong, you can't put the controller down because you have to finish even if it takes you 20 minutes. It's a shame too because some of the games are passable or even fun, especially with multiple people. I really like that they made the game balance board compatible, at least in theory. I mean, it makes tons of sense in terms of immersion and technical gameplay. But the controls with the board are absolutely not at all responsive. I trust that the balance will properly read my movements about as much I would trust Russel Hantz to not stab me in the back at tribal.
It should also be noted that very few of these minigames would ever actually take place on Survivor. There is absolutely no way in any situation ever that CBS would allow contestants to base jump with a parachute, raft down a waterfall or swim in shark infested waters. I mean, it would make for great TV to watch a contestant punch a shark in the face, but it would also end poorly for everyone involved. I guess I understand why they did this, a lot of the challenges that actually take place just wouldn't work in a video game. But they went too far here and it kills whatever sense the game had of feeling like Survivor. You'd have an easier time finding an obituary for Johnny Fairplay's grandma than you would finding an episode of the show where they show someone getting attacked by a piranha. It was bad enough not having any camp life or strategy but having completely ridiculous challenges was the final nail in the coffin. At least some of the games are relatively fun, but that doesn't change that they don't fit the source material at all.
I guess at the end of the day, I did have some level of fun with Survivor. It's minigames were interesting and at least it was playable. Its graphics may have been below average, but it didn't do too much to mar the otherwise functional gameplay. It's definitely better than the Amazing Race game, that's for sure. I also feel like it would be a lot better with multiple players, though who on earth is going to get more than one or two people together to play a 15-year-old game based on a reality show? There really isn't much more to say, it's a below average but playable mini-game fest. On a scale of "JT's perfect game" to "having to stare at Rich Hatch's hairy butt all season," I would rate this somewhere along the lines of "Erik gives up immunity and gets voted out by the black widow brigade." It was incredibly stupid, but at least offered some entertainment value. The tribe has spoken...
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