Yaris - Xbox Live Arcade

Nov 16, 2007

It almost makes you feel dirty to complain about a game you got for free. And not free - your great aunt bought you the wrong game for Christmas - free, but an honest-to-goodness, MSRP of $0 free game. But honestly, with Yaris, Toyota may have set sales of the vehicle back by a few years.

Realistically, no one expects this type of advert-game to be any good. The Burger King games from earlier this year were crap, but they made up for it a bit with their bizarre humor. Yaris is just junk from start to finish.

Apparently in the future all roads have been replaced by halfpipes, and all commuters have nothing but one of three different Yaris models at their disposal. Oh, and going from point A to B consists mostly of shooting down really bad-looking enemies with a gun that grows from the hood of your cheap import.

And that's all there is to the game. It also sports a multiplayer mode that really boils down to a score attack. The rudimentary driving controls take all the strategy out of driving. Acceleration and steering are both mapped to one analog stick, and it seems like your relative speed has nothing to do with your handling.