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Bad for Business
I recently installed and played mojo master because, apparently,
I am filled with self-loathing. Mojo Master successfully blends
Magic: The Gathering, Singles, and a desperate cry for help
into a gaming experience that isn’t so much bad as it
is horrible. But you can’t exactly blame the game for
its overwhelming crapitude—after all, it was created
as a promotional gimmick for Axe Body Spray.
In the alternate
hellscape universe of this dating game, Axe Body Spray is
a potent power-up instead of a substance that will make you
smell like a strip club bathroom attendant’s worn and
spattered Hush Puppies. |
If you’re capable of making
that cognitive leap, then OK, maybe you can eke a little enjoyment
out of conning digital vixens into dating you with the sub-middle-school
double entendres that pass for wit in Mojo Master. Then again, Mojo Master just might be
the Noel Coward of corporate gaming. After playing—I’m
sorry, enduring—Mojo Master, I took a quick spin around
the Internet to see what other corporations had to offer
in the way of games. Most corporate websites indeed feature
some sort of gaming, most of it incredibly bad Shockwave
mouse clickers that effectively whittle away a few of the
minutes between now and your inevitable death with the added
benefit of a special sneak preview of what purgatory might
be like.
Take, for instance, the entertainment
Coca-Cola provides at mycoke.com—it’s all New
Coke–caliber bad. For example, MyCoke Recycler cunningly
captures the special tedium of fetching tools for an irrational
factory foreman. “Bring me the Poofs!” it commands.
“Bring me the planks!” it orders. First off,
what the hell are Poofs? And why are planks going in my
soda? Uh-oh! Be careful—one wrong step and you might
get incinerated by molten steel! Or electrocuted! Sweet
Moby Dick, is this the same company that wanted to teach
the world to sing? Another game, MyCoke Coaster, seems a
more natural fit until you play it and discover that instead
of promoting responsible beverage-cozy usage, Coaster is
a sequence-memorizing game that charges you with getting
a roller-coaster car to the top of the rails. Coke—the
beverage of one-armed, bail-skipping carnies.
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