Freakout: Calamity TV Show

If you make a dual-stick shooter that takes place on an ultra-violent, futuristic game show, then you better be prepared for the Smash TV comparisons. For gamers of a certain age, that was their first introduction to the sub-genre, and it still ranks as one of the most intense shoot 'em ups of all time. The new game Freakout: Calamity TV Show was definitely inspired by the Midway classic, because it takes the setup of Smash TV and adds a surprisingly compelling story to the mix to create an action game that goes beyond the "big money, big prizes, I love it." But is an interesting twist on the theme enough to make up for ugly graphics, bad gameplay and a whole showcase full of bugs?

Although the setup is straight out of Smash TV, Freakout actually has more in common with Portal. We start out as a normal contestant on a dystopian game show about killing waves of mutants, but everything changes as we shoot our way backstage and learn the truth about an evil company called FizzyCorp. Things only get more complicated as our hero is fed contradictory information from different sides of the fight, which ultimately involves the violent protest group Antifis.

This sets up what should have been a biting satire on commercialism and the evil lengths that massive corporations will go in order to poison society. Instead, however, Freakout ends up being a pretty standard action game where you go from location to location killing wave after wave of mutants. And with new enemies being added complete with slickly-produced video packages, it often feels like we're still participating in that violent game show.

As disappointing as the squandered idea is, it's not even close to being the biggest problem in Freakout. But before we get into the many, MANY reasons why you should skip this game, I first want to talk about one thing that I genuinely like -- the level designs. They aren't always memorable, but I appreciate that the game stages the action in more than just a boring arena. There are walls, tables and rooms to fight through, as well as destructible environments to knock down. It also isn't afraid to get wacky, like when we get into a shootout inside a perfectly recreated version of the Pac-Man maze. It's a bit silly, but it does give the game some much-needed personality.

Unfortunately, the level designs and story are pretty much the only two things this game has going for it. This is a bland, frustrating and often broken shoot 'em up that is neither as clever nor exciting as it thinks it is. It's also incredibly ugly. The tiny graphics and muted colors welcome you to Freakout, and it only gets worse from there. From the character designs to the drab textures to the grainy cinema introducing each enemy, this game looks like a relic from the original PlayStation.

The unpolished visuals are only made worse by what can best be described as an unstable frame-rate problem. With mutant enemies of all shapes and sizes rushing you, there are times when the animation chugs to a crawl. And it's not just slowdown issues, but the sensation that frames are being dropped. Everything sputters and jerks around, which made Freakout impossible to play for long stretches of time. I'm not exaggerating when I tell you that the frame-rate issues actually hurt my eyes.

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Beyond the presentation, Freakout also has a lot of collision detection problems. You'll notice that the hit meter is inconsistent from one moment to the next, setting up situations where you can be killed by enemies that aren't even close to you. This is especially bad during a certain fight against a war train boss, which keeps tossing these steel balls at our hero. This is the kind of onslaught that would normally be easy to avoid, but made so much more frustrating by the awful collision detection in Freakout. There are times where you will seemingly pass right through the giant cannonball, while other times you'll die without it even hitting you. These kinds of cheap deaths are never fun.

And it doesn't end with the shoddy gameplay, because Freakout is also broken. We see glimpses of the bugginess early on, when the enemies will literally jump out of the levels and to their deaths. Suicidal bad guys is one thing, but what's really annoying is when the waves of bad guys stop charging and you're stuck exploring a completely empty room. The game has this weird problem of not triggering the next story beat or checkpoint and instead locking you in a level with nothing to do. The only solution is to die or restart the level from the beginning. And this happens constantly. I ran into this more than a dozen times while playing through the campaign, including several times in a row on the same level. It was during those moments when I seriously debated quitting the game once and for all. I should have listened to my gut.

After being pleasantly surprised by the story and setup, Freakout: Calamity TV Show ultimately disappointed by being an ugly, frustrating and toothless exercise in repetition. The bland texture, awful collision detection and painfully unstable frame-rate problems completely overshadow the few unique and compelling bits. And all that is before you realize that this game is teaming with nasty bugs, some of which might as well be game-breaking. I love the idea of Smash TV with a deeper story, but Freakout gets too much wrong for me to recommend it. Nope, I would not buy that for a dollar.