Myth Makers: Orbs of Doom review

We would not be surprised if Myth Makers: Orbs of Doom came about in a board meeting brainstorming session, where someone said, “Okay, how can we trick children into shelling out twenty bucks, and then proceed to make them cry and throw their remote into the wall?” Data Design Interactive specializes in gaming trash designed to sneak money from unsuspecting wallets with the least effort invested in art, sound, programming, design, and testing. Note that those categories basically cover every aspect of games.

Myth Makers: Orbs of Doom continues the tradition by having every aspect feel cheap, ugly, and insulting to your hard earned money, and it’s irrelevant that it’s a budget title, because this game wouldn’t be worth a two dollar download. In fact, if you found this game free on the internet, you’d stop playing it after five minutes at the most.

As the game loads, the foreboding cheapness has already begun. There is no music or ambient sound on the main menu – we thought we’d forgotten to turn on the TV’s volume. You choose your character from an assortment of unimaginative, bland children in “goofy” costumes. Of course your choice means nothing – all ten or so characters play exactly the same.

The gameplay is a cheap knockoff of the “monkey puzzle” minigame in Super Monkey Ball. You tilt the remote to tilt the entire game world, which in turn causes your ball to roll along. The moment you begin to do this, the infuriating frustration begins. The Havok physics engine should bode well, yet the simple act of tilting the world doesn’t work consistently. Sometimes you’ll tilt the remote a little bit and get the appropriate gentle forward roll, and sometimes you’ll fly forward way too fast. Never mind that the calibration is just too damn sensitive even when it works.