The Title Is the Best Thing About This Game –
With only one stage that repeats without any variation and a short time limit, Crazy Chicken: Pirates 3D is a one dimensional and pretty terrible shooting gallery downloadable eShop game even for the cheap $1.99 price point. But at least the name makes the game sound more entertaining than it really is. Chickens! That are pirates? And crazy?! Sure, I might want to check this out…
Using the analog stick to scroll the screen, the stylus on the touch screen to control aiming, and the shoulder button to fire, the player will shoot the same mindless pirate chickens over and over until the 90 second time limit expires. With no way to lose or for the chickens to fight back, the goal is to reach the highest score possible but point totals are limited to a local leaderboard only. Worse, it takes almost the same amount of time to type in your name on the leaderboard than it does to actually play the game.
Get used to seeing this same area
The one and only stage not only has chicken pirates spread out doing random stupid things, but bonus points can be awarded for shooting the pirate crossbone symbols and gold coins. Once the time is up, it is rinse and repeat with no variation whatsoever. This means the player will literally see everything the game has to offer in a minute and a half. After playing a few rounds it is possible to memorize the location of all the bonus targets and chicken positions giving this title no replay value whatsoever. Imagine playing leveling 1-1 in Super Mario Bros. over and over again; eventually you will learn the location of every obstacle and point enhancer until you can maximize the score. Needless to say, this downloadable game is boring and actually pointless. Bird Mania at least has randomly generated objects which makes each experience different even though the gameplay remains the same.
Shooting stationary targets that don’t fight back isn’t much fun
With a weak 3D effect and Claymation style graphics, the visuals leave something to be desired and are even misleading as only certain elements in the background are interactive. The player receives points for shooting random things in the background but it is frustrating when some background objects cannot be shot even though they appear to be interactive. Further, the game reduces the player’s score with each reload, so wasting ammo on non-interactive things just makes the game seem unfair. But after playing the same single stage over and over, this issue eliminates itself through memorization. The soundtrack, like the entire game, also repeats at annoyingly high levels.
Even with the low price point, there are better options available on the 3DS eShop, like the Mario Calculator.
Worse Than: Duck Hunt
Also Try: Outdoors Unleashed: Africa 3D
For Some Reason: There are many games in this Crazy Chicken series
By: Zachary Gasiorowski, Editor in Chief myGamer.com