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Listen, bear with me for a minute, uh...because...I mean, you’re not even going to believe this.
This is, like...if you made a Wolfenstein knockoff in 1993, only with less Nazis and
more tomatoes...but years later, you know, you get diagnosed criminally insane...and
then, you decide to bring it to the iPhone with touch controls.
But since you’re...you know, you’re criminally insane...this is what happens.
This game is called Crazy Teapots. And, uh...I mean, crazy is an exceedingly gentle way of
putting it. This is a 3D deathmatch...thing...in which teapots try to destroy each other with
vegetables. You assume these are the crazy teapots referenced in the title, but then
you realize...you know, bloodshot eyes and dilated pupils would seem to indicate something
other than crazy.
And what I want to know is...what exactly is inside these teapots?
This game was made by a Russian IT guy. Actually, it’s his very first attempt at an iPhone
game, and in some ways, you can tell. Uh, I mean...there are a lot of things happening
here, and a lot of them are, you know, not ideal. But at the core of this game...there’s
at least something interesting.
Throwing bananas at a cracked-out teapot is, if nothing else, interesting.
So the game does kind of remind me of old shooters. I’m talking, like, shareware Wolfenstein
clones from the early nineties...in that it’s familiar in a good way and kinda, like, dated
in a bad way. The gameplay feels really floaty and imprecise, which makes shooting with any
degree of accuracy almost impossible.
The crazy thing is that, despite a shaky gameplay foundation, the game does have some ambitious
ideas. I mean, you can play locally, you can play online...I’m actually being shot by
Brandon, who works here at Classic Game Room. The game supports eight players, there are
three camera angles...it even supports voice chat, which is pretty awesome.
But Crazy Teapots does have some problems, and a lot of them do have to do with design.
None of it is immediately intuitive, and that also poses a bit of a problem.
I think there are a lot of good ideas—among perhaps mind-altering substances—in Crazy
Teapots. But I also think some of the execution isn’t there. Perhaps a simpler approach
with more focus on polished action might’ve been beneficial, but as it is, Crazy Teapots
is a crazy game...you wouldn’t be crazy to pass on.