xav's 2023 media thread: Whiplash (2003) (REPLAY x2)

(originally posted 6/20/23)

im putting both the ps2 and xbox box art here because i beat both versions back to back. xbox first, then i went back and finished my ps2 save immediately afterwards

im gonna talk about this game for a bit because i love it more than i should

so, like...whiplash is a game that is far from perfect. its very buggy in a lot of places- certain models glitching and freaking out, some animations just not playing, sounds not working or outright missing in some cases, etc etc. this is most apparent with the xbox version, which was developed by a slightly different team and i think is an earlier build? it has voice lines that never played in my ps2 copy, alongside with animations that never showed up there either. theres a lot of glitches that *only* happen in that version too

even outside of its technical problems, there’s inherent issues with the game’s design too. it’s a beat-em-up platformer with an emphasis on breaking stuff, but the combat becomes very simple with only occasional combo upgrades that add a little bit of spice but not much. enemies and bosses range from easy to annoying. the most difficult things get is when they block your attacks or with some of them like the unarmed hazmat workers grab redmond and you have to button mash to get out of the grab. you get very used to the rhythm of combat / combos

the power boss and rusty the surgeon are probably the worst bosses in the entire game just because of how annoying and time consuming their fights are

im gonna just leave this all bosses video for you to skip through so you can see generally how they go

the platforming is fine, but theres many parts of the game meant to just waste your time and nothing more, i.e. in vents where there’s hot air that will damage spanx, that take like 15-20 sec. to stop, or parts in the shipping level where lasers wont deactivate for 20-30 sec.

the ventilation hub, the 2nd hub of the game, is meant to take you to the ends of the power (4th level) and waste (7th level) areas, but the path to get them is only slightly less time consuming than just replaying the levels up to those points? and in the xbox version, the waste shortcut just...doesn’t work? there’s a black void blocking you from leaving the teleport pipe once you warp back to the tunnels in waste?

there are these things called robomice which are bonus collectables that you can choose to use on enemies but they dont do much. yet, they dont contribute to the overall completion percentage, which is good because theyre hidden in the worst spots and i really would not want to go back through an entire level just to get extremely small collectables, wasting more time if you decide to go back and get them

which, on the note about the completion percentage...that’s bugged too? its only ever possible to get a 95% completion rate because certain flags dont clear for the last 5%, which i did on the ps2 version so...maybe that counts as a 100% by extension

the humor in the game has aged...questionably, like theres a fucking roman polanski joke with an enemy that looks nothing like roman polanski, and they do it twice, where he comes back as a security card boss called "robo polanksi"?????

that’s the most extreme the game gets with its jokes, the rest is just a lot of dated humor or repeated quips, some gross humor in a few places...a character says "SuX0rz" at one point.

so like, there’s all this bad shit about the game...but i cant bring myself to hate it!

this is a game i played over and over in my childhood, and repeatedly throughout my life. this is probably like, my 8th or 9th playthrough of this game? there’s something about the style and the environments that i love a lot? the gameplay is weirdly addicting? i love the music?

i guess this is what you’d call a guilty pleasure? i recognize fully the game is very mid and has aged a little poorly, but it has this charm despite its problems. ive memorized the entire game front to back in every aspect, researched as much of the game’s development as i could (there is exactly ONE developer diary i could find online, and i have an E3 build of the game on my computer that i mess with), i mean fuck i even brought the strategy guide just to own a piece of whiplash merch. im even considering making a redbubble design of the game’s rabbit logo to put on a shirt. i struggled for DAYS to get it working on my modded xbox and its the first game ive beaten on it

ive even managed to get the company’s earnings into the negatives (which is something ive never done before)

there are jokes that i still laugh at! granted in a lot of those cases its an ironic laughter but shit its still a laugh. ive even watched and rewatched the movie version one of the *devs* made 13 years ago and compared it to whats in the game, and theres a lot of differences

so uh...yeah. idk. i really like this game, and i own that completely. and i have now beaten every possible version of it in existence. i have no clue what this says about me

fuck, did i write more here than with my posts about persona 5 royal????

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