Centipede

"I'd rather play with a real centipede"

The sequel to a mildly popular video game of the same name, Centipede for the Playstation will make you welcome death after playing it for 25 minutes. Hasbro obviously knew they had a failure upon their hands when tossed the original Centipede into the game - which doesn't salvage anything but the game's poor graphics.

Where to start off? The original Centipede is somewhat entertaining, the only problem though is that it somehow has a tremendous load time! The Snickers phrase ''Not going anywhere for awhile?'' comes to mind. Just pop the disc in, click on ''Arcade'' and get ready to take a nap because you won't be playing for awhile. The load time for each and every level in Adventure mode is even worse, by the time you get to level 3, it will be judgement day. The game's individual aspects must be explained to truly understand why it stinks.

Story: 1/10 - Bugs come to your town and you've got to kill them in a space ship. I'd rather read a poem from Shaq about the various morsels he digged out of his nostrils while watching the Harry Potter movie. I wouldn't want to read the part about him eating them though.

Gameplay: 4/10 - The controls are more clanky than the 1978 Schwin Bike that MC Hammer rides to work on. The jumping mechanism is horrible, the ship you ride in is rackety and unresponsive, but the worst part is the hit detection, which is down right deplorable. Once you get killed by a spider that didn't even touch you for the tenth time, prostate cancer will become appealing.

Graphics: 3/10 - The visits you will need to take to the Optometrist after playing Centipede will put a healthy dent on your savings account. You'll have a hard time distinguishing between the new Centipede and the old as the bugs look like they were drawn by a paraplegic. With blurry insects and a white dorito looking like spaceship, the lesson to be learned is do not smoke crack then make video games.

Sound: 5/10 - The producers did everyone a favor by putting in very little sound and making it very difficult to remember. For this, I will give them a 5.

Final Thought - If you are thinking about buying this game then do yourself a favor, gimme the five bucks, I'll kick you in the jimmy, and we'll call it a day.

Reviewer's Score: 2/10, Originally Posted: 09/26/02, Updated 09/26/02