Review: Dash of Destruction
Background
Doritos Dash of Destruction is the second advertisement based game to be released on the Xbox LIVE Arcade. Under most circumstances a game that shares the same lineage as the piss-poor Yaris game, would be disregarded as utter garbage, but it has a single redeeming factor: The design is based off of the winner Unlock Xbox contest.
For those of you who don’t remember, the Unlock Xbox competition took part last year as a venue for Doritos to brainstorm their next great game design / advertising vehicle. A few of the standout submissions were put up for a vote on the chip giant’s website and this was selected by the community as the winning design.
After it all was said and done, the winning designer, Mike Borland, had the opportunity to work with NinjaBee to develop this free giveaway.
Good
The major selling point for this game is the fact that you can’t beat the price. Weighing it at the whopping price of free, this is a no brainer for any Xbox owner. It is hard to argue that a game is bad when you didn’t have to pay anything to get it. This lackluster title is no exception to the rule, but you will never find me looking a gift horse in the mouth.
Dash of Destruction features two completely different gameplay modes. In the first mode, you play as a Doritos truck driver attempting to frantically evade the pursuing dinosaurs, bent on devouring your payload. Drop-off points are scattered throughout the map and jump around as you make your deliveries. A second gameplay mode switches roles, giving you control of the ridiculously overpowered digital dino. As the T-Rex your main goal is to prevent the successful delivery, due to an unhealthy fetish for nacho chips.
By the time you are familiar with the gameplay mechanisms, it becomes very evident that this is a game that is all about the gamerscore. It is actually humorous that the dialog in-between stages, refers to itself not in terms of levels, but the number of points left to add to your gamerscore. This is the most refreshing piece of honesty that the game has to offer. On a good play though, all of the 200 gamerscore can be wrapped up in less than an hour.
Bad
It is very hard to justify something that can be conquered in under an hour as anything more than a glorified flash game. Granted, the game was released for no cost, but you would think that the developers would have taken a bit more time developing the game into something that people would actually find worthwhile.
Multiplayer in Dash of Destruction seems like even more of an afterthought, thrown in at the last second to pacify message board Nazis. Further compounding the problem is that there is no online component to the multiplayer. Only couch play is available, so all those who’s online friends live miles away will be unfortunately be left out in the cold.
Ugly
If you were to look up product placement in the dictionary, you would see a screenshot of this game next to it. This is nothing more than a shameless cash-in, used to generate hype for a product that most of the target audience, (gamers) already buy on a regular basis. Further compounding the issue, the tie between Doritos and dinosaurs is thin at best, leaving the player dissatisfied when the game is finished.
Conclusion
Doritos: Dash of Destruction is a product of a neat online marketing competition gone horribly awry. The giveaway is a marginally entertaining, premature ejaculation of a game that needed a lot more time in development to make it even remotely worth your time. But when it is free, I guess you are just getting what you paid for…
Score: 4.5
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