Caravella's Critical Crisis

Every responsible adult knows that there are more important things in life than winning at video games. Obviously, rational thoughts like that rarely enter one’s mind while playing the said video games, so it doesn’t make a difference in the end. It also depends on the game in question, on the other hand, because probably no one is going to risk starvation for a Freecell marathon.

Well, not exactly. Caravella's Critical Crisis is a funny arcade game in which you are actually pretending to play Kojima’s latest fictional release. There’s more to it than just that, on the other hand, since your gaming sessions are interrupted by chores and household emergencies. Since you can’t return to playing until everything is sorted out, you kind of have to deal with the issues as soon as they come up.

The main character’s name is Vincent Caravella, a married man with a child. Hideo Kojima’s fictional game is named Critical Crisis, and it is about the usual stealth and killer robots. In fact, the mini-game is quite fun and engaging, albeit not very complicated. You can shoot and walk around enemies by avoiding their line of sight. It’s certainly not a revolution in the genre, but it’s also not meant to be one.

The emergencies seem to happen at random, so they’ll never interrupt you in the same section over and over again. They also pile up most of the time, which means that you’ll often spend more time taking care of them than playing. Whether you have to fix your child’s toy truck, take out the garbage or get the laundry, there’s always something requiring your immediate attention somewhere around the house.

From a visual point of view, the game is not exactly a knockout. The pixelated graphics are like that by design, on the other hand, and they are actually quite nice if you are into the whole retro look. The stealth game really looks like something that might have been developed thirty years ago, especially interface-wise.

When it’s all said and done, Caravella's Critical Crisis is still just a jam game, which means that it is very short and to the point. However, it may be a good idea to expand on the original concept, because there's a lot of potential here.