CID The Dummy Review

Well here I am, sat bemused at the TV screen wondering how to describe what I have endured, to you dear readers. You see; usually the protagonist that you get to control in the vast majority of games will have some sort of personality, some endearing qualities that you can relate with making your experience with that title more enjoyable. Whereas with CID the Dummy, making the main character a crash test dummy has resulted in one of the most dull and uninteresting characters I have encountered, even the Doom Marine has more charm than CID.

During the games initial cut-scene we are introduced to CID and his hunger for a more interesting line of work, as opposed to sitting in a car seat and hurled at the nearest wall for test data. Your guide throughout the game, Professor B.M. Werken (spot the car reference there kids) notices CID complaining via the CCTV system in the warehouse and decides that CID is the perfect candidate to test out a new experimental suit. This decision invokes the rage of the professor's one time colleague now nemesis, D-TROIT, provoking him to kidnap the good professor's daughter MIA.
It's worth noting that while the voice acting is presumably aimed at the younger gaming audience, it doesn't necessarily excuse the usage of a David Walliams style high pitched voice akin to his "I'm a lady" sketch, executed with such poor precision I actually had to mute the TV whenever the professor spoke to avoid the agonising tone.

Onto the game itself and you're presented with a typical 2D platformer in a faux 3D world which involves you performing the usual tasks of running, jumping, climbing things, solving simple puzzles and opening doors to enable you to progress in the game. It will throw you a couple of variations such as sneaking along a wall to avoid security camera's or making you sprint to a door or fence after activating a timed switch to break up the repetitive nature of platform games which actually work reasonably well.

However the control system in the game has a couple of flaws which made my time with CID frustrating at points. Firstly you have a bazooka to shoot your enemies, yet the method of equipping this is to hold down the A button then sort of flick the Wiimote over your shoulder to simulate hoisting a bazooka. Good idea in theory yet the execution of this move fails, it takes a few moments for the game to register that you've flicked your controller into this position which makes it annoying when you have a few enemies to dispatch. Though nine times out of ten it just made CID perform his 'Judo Chop' causing me to hurl multiple profanities at the screen whilst building up my rage to volcanic proportions.

Once I had the bazooka equipped, the actual aiming of the weapon seemed a little erratic for me, it appeared that I needed a couple of waves of the controller before I got a proper shot at an enemy which puzzled me to why I had this particular problem as the controls were surprisingly responsive, albeit with varying degrees of personal success.

Graphically, the game does its job adequately and nothing really seemed to be out of place. It's colourful, for the most part, with a cartoon like charm which would appeal to the younger gamer. All the character animations were smooth, when I actually got the moves to work properly that is, and it did feel fairly well polished. The cut-scenes played well, whenever they didn't involve B.M. Werken's annoying voice acting, and helped to develop the plot of the game like any good cut-scene should in my opinion. The music was enjoyable though seemed to loop too quickly and could have done with some more lengthy tracks for each level but it's a minor mark against the game in all honesty.

Overall I can't really say I enjoyed my time with CID the Dummy due to the dreadful voice acting in this title. I know the actual gaming content is reasonable and may provide a few hours of entertainment for the kids but seriously, it doesn't bode well if someone has to play a game on mute to avoid a game character's voice over.