First Look – Johnny Whatever
Warthog Games, based in the UK, has previously been known for their licensed titles and their long going association with Warner Bros. Contributions to Harry Potter and Looney Tunes franchises have produced a few likeable, but short lived games.
A few screenshots of their latest, original games have been offered up and we’ve got them. Among them are Sticky Balls, a colorful puzzler and Milo and the Rainbow Nasties, a cutsie platform adventure starring a Jimmy Neutron look-a-like. Most innovative of their new forays is a genre splitter called Johnny Whatever. Generally, game play appears to be of the Jak & Daxter ilk, standard 3D platform adventure. You play underground rocker Johnny, who emerges from a gig to find his hometown of futuristic London overrun by RoboBobbies and learns that the queen has been imprisoned…in a vat of mustard. We don’t get it either, but armed with your nuclear accelerated guitar, you’ll take to the streets and use music as your weapon to defeat the robots, save the citizens from slavery and return the queen to power.
Like we said, pretty standard, though somewhat imaginitive platformer. What sets Johnny Whatever apart though is beneath it all, the game is a rythm based title. Music IS your weapon and you’ll need to learn how to play well known actual licensed songs with your Xbox controller in order to juice up your axe and defeat the robots. We’re figuring it messes with their electronic brains or scrambles their frequencies or something like that. A few screenshots showed Johnny strumming out Wild Thing by The Troggs or Jumpin Jack Flash by the one and only Rolling Stones.
Part Ghostbusters and part Billy Idol, this is certainly a new combination of gameplay. It may not go platinum, but anything is better than Aerosmith’s RevolutionX of arcade fame in the 80’s.
