Let me quote this from the blurb: CID THE DUMMY is a platform game that grabs you straight away with its amusing blend of action and puzzle-filled gameplay. Based around the multiple opportunities for a Crash Impact Dummy to get into mischief, the game blends classic platform elements such as timed jumps, collecting pick-ups, defeating enemies, and challenging boss battles with more cerebral elements such as puzzles, clever weapon use and route finding.

Now let me give you my opinion: CID the Dummy is an aptly titled game because to be honest, only a true dummy would pay for this. Either that or a kid perhaps who was really sold on the idea of controlling a character that can be best described as Captain Generic. CID the Dummy is a Wii title that made me wish I could have those hours I tried to sink into it back, not only back, with interest.

Read on if you give a damn or just skip to the end.

Story

Professor B.M.Werken's lovely daughter (who I didn't give a damn about) has been kidnapped and it's up to CID, yeah, the Crash Test Dummy who has been given special powers by the Profa, who could do with a couple of letters in his name removed and changed around, I don't know, perhaps the e and r to an a and an n, to rescue her in this tale of heroic legends that will last for ever and e...sorry, let me start over with that bit...

He has to rescue the Prof's daughter in this utter yawnfest. Captain Generic there is bored of his life as a CTD (Crash to Desktop?) and needs adventure and you can probably guess the rest. Frankly, the introduction left me utterly under-whelmed.

Gameplay

The tried and tested puzzle method makes an unwelcome appearance here, key + locked door = door open. Or in this case, avoid security camera and press button to open door. An easy task you might add, it would be if the programmers of this muttonfest had actually 'programmed' the game properly with decent controls. I want to stab the eyes out of the idiot that decided to equip/unequip CID's bazooka/rocket launcher deal...you need to...hold the A button and move the Wiimote to shoulder level, yeah, that was clever on paper. In practise it sucks worse than the vaccum in my aunt's penthouse. Or the maid, I don't know which.

When you're faced with obstacles, enemies and whatnot, it becomes an exercise in frustrating deaths. Couple this with the game's lack of checkpoint saving, you're looking at a one way trip to Frustration Town, population: you. I shouldn't be too harsh on this, I mean someone obvious tried to make a game here and must have thought, hey, in the old school days of gaming players used to love this crap - they'd die repeatedly for hours and hours just to reach a screen that says, thank you for playing, now play it again.

Well, this is a more enlightened time and gamers expect a little more bang for their buck. If you go into a Subway and buy a footlong with extra meat, you expect extra meat not a footlong made with just bread and a slice of ham. This is what CID feels like to me. It's not even a footlong either; its two slices of crusty, mouldy old bread with a forty day old tuna in the middle of rotting mayonnaise.

CID has a bunch of moves he can do, the Nunchuck and Wiimote respond fluidly to these commands, or they would if this was say ' A GOOD GAME'. They have a serious lag issue and nine times out of ten the super moves would fail to trigger, or in the case of simple navigation, the same deal. It's all extremely annoying. The basic attack seems to work decently most of the time though; a quick shake of the Wiimote performs this. I didn't really bother with many of the super moves and the Panic Move and the whole idea to collect orbs and power stuff up bored me to tears after a while.

Graphics

It's a 2d deal with a false 3d perspective and it doesn't work really well. The overall colour scheme seems to be grey with an extra dab of grey and some brown with poorly rendered backdrops and lack lustre graphics. You could take a packet of red sauce, brown sauce and mayonnaise and smear them on a tabletop to get the same effect for less of the cost too. The graphics for the characters aren't bad, however, by the time you start to look at that you've already been soured by everything else.

Animations

Yeah, these are pretty good; they're fluid enough and have a nice cartoonish quality with some of the character graphics. I can't really rag on the animations, its one thing that the developers got mostly right. So they must have hired someone who can animate worth a damn.

Sound

Uninspired audio serves to completely drown the game in a torrent of rough effects and beepy little twinkles that annoy the hell out of me.

Music

A looping soundtrack that loops way too quickly, it's jarring and pretty bad.

Dialogue/Voice

Bad script, if it's played for laughs then I'm afraid they missed the mark even if they were aiming through a 12x rifle scope at a barn with a 100foot bullseye on it that not even a Stormtrooper could miss. The voice acting is laughable and at times it sounded so bad that I was forced to turn the sound down and overdub with a faux Japanese accent. This actually improved the game and can be recommended for a lot of bad titles.

Multiplayer

No, and thankfully not. You wouldn't want to inflict this kind of game on anyone else. It should be banned under the Gamer's Geneva Convention or locked away in a room marked: Danger - Beware of the Man Eating Tiger. The game is so bad it ranks as pure shovel-ware.