Beavis and Butt-head

"Beavis and Butthead Not Doing America"

Believe it or not, my reviews aren't so much reviews as they are eloquent attempts at stand-up comedy in the form of a game review. I am merely an entertaining tramp whose sole purpose throughout the entirety of this review is to make you laugh, but I'm not an idiot: I'm reviewing a game, first and foremost, but after I do that I'll still try and oust a cheap laugh or two while I can.

Remember Beavis and Butthead? The television show was followed around two kids cleverly named Beavis and Butthead, and they were intellectually the type of spawn that you'd expect from teenagers who watch MTV all day long. They were stupid, perverse and simplistic, but the show was still pretty amusing. The show's best moments always involved our protagonists' interaction with other people, usually involving their school or their neighbor (the previous incarnation of Hank Hill). So, you'd think a video game starring these two would be absolutely novel. You'd be wrong.

Beavis and Butthead's plot is rather similar to that of a regular episode: GWAR is on tour, and Beavis and Butthead, who have the income you'd expect of two seemingly parentless idiots with jobs at a mere burger shack, decide to run around their town performing acts of ''coolness'' (read: wanton destruction). After each regaling performance, they document it by taking a simple photograph as proof that they're ''cool.'' The purpose here is that GWAR will see them, and agree that Beavis and Butthead are so ''cool'' that they're allowed in for free. These photos marking their ''coolness'' will suffice for tickets, you see? The comedic potential is limitless!

''Look Beavis... he's fallen and he can't get it up.''

The game's misstep is in its execution, which leaves Beavis and Butthead reasonably voiceless throughout the game's run. Oh sure, there are the obligatory droning laughs, but whatever chance of hilarity there is during the game's run is never exercised. Beavis and Butthead's sole interaction with their peers and surrounding adults is their hitting them with a baseball bat and then taking a picture of it. There is no confrontation, no wacky situation, and there isn't even any commentary, so coming into the game expecting such golden lines, such as, ''They suck, but they suck in, like, new ways we haven't heard before, so I guess that makes them kinda cool,'' will ultimately yield disappointment.

This lack of wacky situations and confrontations means that things such as the comic reality formed by the graphics and sound ultimately produce no big laughs. Once you play far enough into the game, you'll realize that the chuckle induced by the first impression of Couch Fishing and Beavis and Butthead's wacky teaming up is as good as it's going to get. Also, you're going to quickly realize that the game lasts about as long as an ordinary episode of Beavis and Butthead, and that the game is hardly taxing and isn't worth repeat visits. The same enemies return over and over, and it ultimately doesn't amount to a fascinating game, unless you enjoy mind-numbing tedium as opposed to action and excitement.

Oddly enough, the BradyGames Player's Guide for this game comes out on top, as it's far funnier than the game is, reading it is a far better use of the half-hour you could spend on this game, and it's probably funnier if/when you come back to it the day after. It manages to succeed more than this game does because Beavis and Butthead provide their so-dumb-it's-funny commentary on each page, providing comic relief to the normally stressing narrative of the Player's Guide.

No such luck with the actual game, though. The visuals are pretty and true to the show, the sound offering as realistic a representation of laughing dull-witted teenagers and crashing noises is bound to get, but this game lacks severely in entertainment. Unless, of course, droning laughter gets you a-roarin', in which case you probably relate to our protagonists and will find this game hard and worth the investment of a week in order to beat it. However, the rest of us will feel bored, disappointed and perhaps a little frustrated with the fact that the thirty minutes necessary to beat the game provided no laughs and no escape.

So, in summation, while this game may suck, it doesn't suck like anything seen before, and so it is unfortunately not the least bit cool.

Reviewer's Score: 3/10, Originally Posted: 03/17/04