It’s hard to ignore the fact that Hot Pixel is a blatant clone of Wario Ware, but try not to hold that against it. After all, you could make the argument that Doom is just a clone of Castle Wolfenstein, but that doesn’t make it any less wonderful, right? It’s unlikely that Nintendo will ever release a Wario Ware for the PSP, so it’s not even like the games are in direct competition. So don’t hate Hot Pixel because it mimics a popular game’s format. Hate it because it does so with a “hip,” “urban” aesthetic that’s approximately as enjoyable as watching an I Love New York marathon on VH-1.
The game is a collection of fast-paced minigames that last just a few seconds each. You’re given three lives to make it through nine games and a boss on levels that are grouped together roughly by an overall theme, such as color. A game starts with a simple instruction—eat all blue, do the wave, embellish—but you’re not told what that means or how to do it. Figuring out the object of each game, as well as the controls, is part of the challenge. Though the mechanics of some games are immediately obvious, others are more obtuse, and you’ll lose many a life just trying to understand what exactly you’re meant to be doing, or which buttons you should be pressing.
Playing through the game’s ten levels unlocks other modes of play, as well as higher difficulty levels. In harder modes, “disturbers” add some challenge by messing with the screen, shaking it or making it shrink. If that’s too aggravating, rest assured that even the “Normal” mode presents enough replay and challenge to keep you happy for extended periods, so you don’t have to move on to harder ground unless you really, really want to.
As is true of most minigame collections, the games are a mixed bag, covering the gamut from crap to fun (small f) to Fun (capital F). Most of them fall somewhere in the middle, not awful, not awe-inspiring, but certainly entertaining enough to keep you interested for the few seconds that they last. Levels also build upon past experiences, so that a skill or mechanic you used for a simple game in Level 1 will be expanded upon and used in a more complex game in Level 5. It’s a simple and logical trick, but it gives the collection a sense of cohesion and helps you feel like you’re actually progressing and getting better, instead of just getting lucky.
Hot Pixel wisely takes advantage of the PSP’s WiFi abilities by letting players pad the title’s roster of 200 or so minigames by downloading another 70 from the game’s website. It’s a smart move, and one that gives it a slight leg up on other minigame compilations, though it’s tough to say how often new games will be added, if at all.
Whether or not you enjoy Hot Pixel will largely depend on your tolerance for its “urban” shtick, which seems to involve lots of references to skateboarding, graffiti, and ‘bling’. For reasons I can’t quite fathom, the pixelized minigames are surrounded by live-action interstitials featuring a white guy mugging wildly for the camera. He looks rather a lot like your dad would if he were a pasty accountant dressing up as a rapper for Halloween, complete with oversized t-shirt and trucker hat pulled to the side. It’s hard to picture even the most easy-to-please audience (I’m thinking four-year-olds hyped up on Pixie Stix) getting a chuckle out of his nonsense.
“Yeaaaah, boyyyyyy” aesthetic aside, Hot Pixel’s biggest issue is that the games are, for the most part, just so-so, lacking the inventiveness and addictiveness of a Wario Ware. You won’t be bored playing it, but you won’t be enthralled either, and as easy it is to pick it up, it’s just as easy to put it back down. Once you’ve run through the minigames a few times—which, to be fair, will take a good while—there’s really not much to keep you coming back, other than a lack of anything better to do. Unless you’re really into seeing some gangly Caucasian doing a particularly pathetic hip-hop impression, that is.
