REVIEW: "Grand Poobah" for X-BOX! At E3 this year, we got our first look at the well-anticipated Xbox title from Black Swan Entertainment. Yep, that would be “Grand Poobah” ... the game we’ve been covering for over seven months now with little to no actual information. At a press conference in LA last year, BSE public relations consultant Rachel Morris announced the launch of a three part video game franchise based in the world of HellmouthCentral.com. “Grand Poobah” is the first of these titles and we got our first hands-on impression with the game this past May. WARNING: VIDEO GAME SPOILERS ARE REVEALED IN THE COMING PARAGRAPHS. For those of you who have been anxiously awaiting this release for some time now, we unfortunately have some rather unpleasant news. Our first impression with the game wasn’t good at all. The title screen basically consisted of a few shiny dots scattered along a black background. It almost resembled child’s drawing of a starry night, only the lights were colored in shades that could just about blind you with their brightness after staring too long. For instance, there were neon green, grape, light blue, and several mixed and assorted colors flashing before the screen as the game loaded which could cause serious eye damage. Luckily, the game’s box lists all the medical information regarding its problematic loading screens. So long as you have a decent pair of sunshades, you’ll be fine. But still, the negatives of this game far outweigh the positives. Case in point, the music wasn’t anything to brag over at all. It sounded like a really bad MIDI file and the download time was incredibly long considering the file sizes couldn’t have been over a megabyte in storage. The title song consisted of about three notes which got played over and over again. Remember what we said about the eyes? Better cover those ears, as well. I was ready to scream by the end of the first progression. But that wasn’t going to spoil our fun. We would save that for the truly bad portions of this game. And trust us, there are many of those to choose from. There are two game modes to select when deciding on a path to play. One is called “Foreplay” and we think it might have been meant for another game, but accidently was placed into this one. It seems to be a very perverted porno interactive experience that has nothing to do with HMC. And since the game requires some form of touchpad that isn’t included for most of its sequences, it’ll basically just stall on you time after time. We believe the title may have been intended for the Nintendo DS, but it’s likely this was never approved as its content rating would surely be through the roof. We expect this mode will probably be deleted from the launch version, so don’t expect to have it included in your package. The other game mode is “career mode” which puts players in the role of the Grand Poobah...before he was a Poobah. Players must carefully choose to build websites using the limitations of free servers and yet somehow maintain at least twenty active Board members at the same time. This portion of the game is extremely difficult...not because of the task, but because of the gameplay. Basically you don’t even see the Poobah throughout the entire first half of the game. Instead, all you do is build websites as if you were actually on the internet. The graphics, however, are nothing to brag over and far from realistic. Very large pixels and the worst color-coded system of our generation puts this game more closely resembled to an Atari title than something made exclusively for the Xbox. And there are far too many limitations on what you can post to make it even remotely entertaining. For instance, you only get about four pictures to choose from when you first start playing. And somehow these are supposed to decorate your site? If you can somehow sucker through the site building stages of the game, however, you come to a level that resembles SimCity by way that you manage your site’s affairs and try to keep the Board members happy. However, Board members often times complain about site features and its up to you to figure out how to make them happy while providing meaningful content that isn’t booed by the majority of your fans. We’re convinced this portion of the game is badly bugged, as well, because it seems Board members complain about the most meaningless of things. For instance, during the session we played a Board member complained that the font size of the articles was too small. Yet when we changed the font for the articles, the same Board member complained about us changing the articles, stating they were perfect to begin with. Then they called us names and left, nearly destroying our approval rating in the process. Another crappy feature is that you can’t scroll back to posts older than one day, game time. So when we tried to explain to the Board member in question that we were only doing what they wanted us to do in the first place, they denied it and then got mad and decided to form a competing website, sending us hate mail every few game turns. Communication is the key to success in this game, and if you can master the art of communicating with your Board members and managing the site, you eventually come to the Merge Level. This portion of the game gives you more power over your site, as you take on a business partner, El Presidente, and revamp most all of your features. The website building tools become a bit easier to navigate through by this point, but the game is still horribly lagged. Long loading times and extremely limited communication control with El Presidente make this level a little slow and boring. But if you can get through the merge, you come to the last third of the game...which puts you in the position to book guests for conventions, hire board moderators, hire new staff, and even communicate with other sites to form alliances. Your Board Community will grow depending on how well you manage keeping your members happy and providing meaningful content. Also, you get access to more Board subgroups you can create at this point in the game. For instance, you can create Shipper Groups and Site Feedback Forums and even Off Topic Forums. Shipper Groups are great at decreasing Board warfare between members, Off Topic Forums are great at increasing traffic to the site, and Site Feedback will give you needed information on how to improve your features to keep your members happy. And if you can manage through this stage, you come to several features of the game which at first look promising...but just don’t deliver. For instance, you get access to a very assorted and diverse cast of characters who become your “staff.” One of them is a giant dolphin who uses a submachine gun. Why? We haven’t figured it out yet. Then again, judging by the rest of the game it appears that BSE might have been intoxicated while this title was in creation. There are several secret levels, including one that has you cast in the role of HMC: Live character “Anonymous Guy” to battle the Fred-haters of the world. A hidden DragonCon level puts you in the role of Poobah as you fight off security guards to make it to your cast interviews on time. And yet another secret level lets you lead a Shipper war in the form of an Irish uprising. But, of course, an HMC Xbox exclusive wouldn’t quite be right without the Xbox, himself. Jon Riggins makes a special guest appearance at the end of the game (after you’ve won every level) to promote Rayban sunglasses. All in all, this is the type of game I wouldn’t wish upon my worst enemy. The graphics suck, the gameplay is dated, and the music will make you want to kill yourself if you haven’t already been gobbled up by the goblins in the DC level. And why are there goblins in the DC level? Joss only knows. Sorry, BSE. This title just plain sucks. --- Credible Gaming Reviewer Game Rating: 1.3 out of 10