Just like Scene It before it, the cinephile in me made the idea of Yoostar 2 just too good to resist. Sadly, just like the latest instalment of what was my favourite movie trivia game, I should have. Yoostar 2 is all hype and no follow-through. To find out just how bad it is, read on.
A Xbox 360 Kinect and Playstation 3 Move title by Blitz Game Studios, Yoostar 2 uses your console’s camera to place yourself (and a friend in some cases) into movie and television show TV clips. Basically, it’s like you’ve suddenly got a green screen in your living room that gives you the chance to replace a title’s normal actors. That’s pretty much it. There’s a challenge mode and a quick play mode, so you can play scenes set by the game, or choose your own.
The concept of Yoostar 2 is second to none; you get to place yourself in a scene of some of your favourite movies and TV shows. The titles you get to take over are right up my alley; from a list of 80, Kick-Ass, Zoolander, 300, Superman Returns, Baby Mama, Terminator, Star Trek, and Star Trek: The Next Generation immediately caught my eye.
This game is either amazing, or absolute rubbish. No in-betweens.
Yoostar 2 better brace itself, because this is going to hurt. You want to be Superman? Great. To do that, you have to try to line up your body with a chalk outline that appears before the clip starts. Easy enough, no problems. Next, you play out the scene — the Superman Returns clip has the Man of Steel flying towards an airplane. Superman is supposed to be flying, and you’re kinda standing around upright with your arms out pretending to mimic the gesture; everything is lost in translation. Heaven forbid you make “whoosh” sounds as you try to make up for your feeble fly-acting, as you’ll lose points whenever you speak out of turn and off the script. Oh, and if you’ve got ANY type of background noise in your house, that’ll happen quite a lot.
Next, you get your lines of Super-dialogue presented at the top of the screen, karaoke-style. As you’re replacing Superman, you don’t actually know when he catches the airplane, or when he rips the door off to go and say hello to Lois …so timing the dialogue is a nightmare. If Superman has a lot of dialogue, you can usually figure it out, but if it’s a one or two word line, good luck. Don’t forget, if you don’t get the timing right, the game penalizes you too. Having fun yet?
Oh, and the best part? Most of the clips you’ll perform and watch back will involve you standing there, stone-faced, spending all of your time concentrating on reading the lines rather than acting in any way.
On top of that, the clips that have been selected from the movies and TV shows are mostly crap. In Kick-Ass, you sit around a table talking about Spider-Man, or stand in front of a mirror pulling fighting poses (that you have to imagine, don’t forget, because you can’t see Kick-Ass performing them). In Zoolander, you wake up and talk to your reporter lady-friend. Why don’t we get memorable clips like the “School for Ants” scene, hmm? The only good scenes you’ll want to do are the classic-type ones such as “I’ll be back” from Terminator, “This is Sparta!” from 300, and maybe even “It’s not a tumor!” from Kindergarten Cop.
In short, and for the millionth time in this review, the concept is great and the end result is terrible. Avoid this game purchase like the plague. If you’ve got a party happening soon and want a novelty item good for an hour or two, pick this up – but do yourself a favour and do it as a rental, okay? Get in, say “I’ll be back”, and then run away never to actually return.
This game gets a well-deserved craptastic rating.
Yoostar 2: In the Movies
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The good
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The bad
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