Men's Room Mayhem is part of this week's Drop for the Vita.
I've been following it for a few weeks now, and while I'll give the game some serious points for idea originality, I'll have to deduct a few for poor taste. In the game, you manage a men's bathroom and attempt to keep it clean and tidy, while directing its patrons around to urinals, toilets, sinks and everything else that a bathroom could possibly have.
The group responsible for Men's Room Mayhem is Sawfly Studios. My understanding is that some of the people in the development team formerly worked on Super Stardust HD and WipEout. This seems like quite a drastic change in direction for them.
Okay, so let's look at the positives here for a second... Could be a fun, simple downloadable title. Maybe even a funny one. But I can't imagine people won't be embarassed playing Men's Room Mayhem, and I can't imagine how awkward it would be to explain the title of this game to someone who is unfamiliar with it. "Is there a war going on in the bathroom?" "Is this a game that a straight guy would be comfortable with playing?" The answers seem to be no and yes, fortunately.
You get bonus points for leaving space between two customers at the urinals, and making the customers wash their hands - stuff like that. But so far those are two of the few examples I've been given. And I can't think of too many more off the top of my head. A lot of similarities have been drawn between this game and air-traffic controller sims, and that is pretty accurate. One person said they played a Flash game like this 10 years ago in a browser. Sadly, that also sounds accurate.
My biggest concern about Men's Room Mayhem, is what this says about the state of the Vita. The system is struggling, it needs good games and needs more supportive fans. A lot of people are calling the Vita a piece of crap. And now the Vita is getting a game about crap. I honestly think that this one small downloadable bathroom sim could only stand to worsen the already-poor image of the Vita. Furthermore, this is a simple simulation game - the Vita has been getting a lot of simplistic games lately, and it's getting really hard to justify the existance of the Vita when it is getting a lot of app-style games.
That said, if the game is free or if there is a demo, I might try it out. I probably won't like it and it will probably get boring fast, since games like this tend to be lame. But Men's Room Mayhem is a game, and it is a Vita game, and crap or not the Vita needs games. And maybe I will even play it in the bathroom, for the 'full experience'. There you go, chances are you already own a bathroom, so you own the biggest piece of video-game enhancing hardware to date!
Thoughts, feelings, concerns? Err... "Let it out."
~ Ovirew
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