WTF

(D3 for PSP)
by Mike Delano

WTF (ahem, Work Time Fun) has the presentation thing down pat: The cute little dude yelling at you on the minimalist cover, zany sound effects, and a generally super-hip artistic vision that feels like the UMD equivalent of an issue of Vice magazine. From the start, it seems poised to be even more endearingly quirky than Nintendo’s WarioWare, the game it so blatantly rips off.

Unfortunately, WTF never comes close to reaching the heights of its inspiration, simply because, despite all of the inspired weirdness on display, it’s just not fun to play. Like WarioWare, it’s a collection of rapid-fire, one-button micro-games, full of random tasks like chopping wood, catching ground balls, or putting caps on pens. Unlike WarioWare, it doesn’t fire the games at you in random order, forcing you to think on your toes. Instead, you’re forced to play the one-note games ad nauseam, like catching (literally) 1,000 ground balls or capping 1,000 pens. You can use the money you earn playing the games to buy new ones, which are just as boring.

For kicks, you could justify the existence of WTF with some high falutin’ grad school logic. Is it a treatise on the banality of our capitalist society wherein meaningless busy work is rewarded with Wal-Mart wages that are spent only on purchasing the meaningless trinkets we create? Maybe. But it’s not fun.
(www.d3publisher.us)