Game:

Doritos Crash Course 2 (2013)

Duration: 3:03

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7

I was really undecided about this one... to the point that I put off whether or not I was going to get into it until there was pretty much no time left... and then I just... went all-in. It's terribly unhealthy and stupid and whatever... but... I felt compelled!

You see, this game is dead. Gone. Poof! You can't even play it anymore even if you wanted to. Did people ever really want to? Part of Xbox's weird limited commitment to a growing Free-to-Play movement... that really didn't pan out much at all. You can see some signs of the earliest attempted concept-provers in the forms of the two Doritos-sponsored games (the original Crash Course and Harm's Way, promotional idea contest co-winners and free product placements ever since... if only really in name) and an intern-spawned project that wasn't good enough to sell, but too good to toss away (Aegis Wing) and was provided for free.

These were the unusual first-wavers of the F2P model as it existed on Xbox LIVE Arcade. What would follow would prove to be... somewhat less-than generous, although one might rightly claim that they were simply outlier examples too unusual in their genesis and undefined in their overall long-term goals to last or be indicative of what was to come.

Now, obviously there are some very particular things that come to mind when it comes to the phrase "free to play" when it comes to video games, and the easy-establishment testing grounds of the home computer has given us examples too numerous to list, much less commit to memory over the long haul... chief among them are often words like "limited features," "optional subscription fees," "microtransactions," "pay to win" and a slew of other... less-flattering descriptors of the basic bread-and-butter by which the "free" get by to pay the bills. (And then if you go really far off the reservation, a lot of them end up being literal scams besides being unsound investments of your time, much less your money. A sort of insult-to-injury situation, if you will.)

The next wave of games under this highly unorthodox model aren't quite THAT far off into the ugly face of the F2P territory, since console manufacturers ARE putting themselves somewhat on the line as a co-conspirator in setting those games out there in their individually-curated and quality-controlled ecosystems.

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Doritos Crash Course 2 is once again barely Doritos-related, but mostly a riff on the whole "obstacle course game show" subgenre... if you subscribe to the belief that there is any such thing to begin with and not just a subculture of occasionally-surging one-off instances throughout the history of TV writing droughts of varying intensities, and once again is the world met with a time trial platformer served up for free to the XBLA users whether they asked for it or not. But this time... things will be different.

For starters, gone is the notion of natural stage progression... instead, a pseudo-economy has been sown on the fertile ground enriched by moderate interest shown towards the festering corpse of the original during the course of its life cycle. Essentially, instead of unlocking new stages by beating the ones that came before them, your goal is instead to earn stars through your performance or simple platformer-oriented exploration and collection to pay tolls to unlock new stages... or opening up new paths through of those stages... or... random limited-use gewgaws, ensuring (theoretically) that you'll have to spend more on them later.

I would've been more inclined to at least pay attention to this one awhile back... but apparently one of the new ideas behind the F2P movement's newer wave was the requirement that you be an Xbox LIVE Gold subscriber all the time and always be connected to the Internet for no other reason than to check to make sure you're paying the whole time. (I actually got booted out of the thing immediately at the time when my current subscription lapsed.)

Oh, and this isn't really a strike against it, but there's another pretty big "problem" visible in this video... the game was clearly not finished at its inception, even having some achievements that weren't attainable until they launched some extra stage sets... and you can see the huge amount of updates required before I could even start the game up properly. (Shouldn't have gated me out when the iron was hot!)

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And that's basically our first look at the thing. We're starting with just this little red flag raised warning you all what was going to happen whether you wanted it to or not. Buckle up or head for the hills, it's happening!

Funny side thought? I would've totally wanted to examine the less systemically ire-inducing first game in greater detail... but this one was dying a most imminent death on Ocboter 20th, 2014. The original's still kicking and even has its own solution to expanding its content that I can find a soapbox to rant about... but whenever I want to and not on their axe's schedule!

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