Irritating Stick (PlayStation)

GameSpot editors' review

• CNET editors' rating: 1.5 stars Poor
  Detailed editors' rating
  Overall score: 3.0 (1.5 stars)

• Reviewed by:
  Jeff Gerstmann
• Reviewed on: 02/25/1999
• Updated on: 05/02/2000
• Released on: 01/31/1999
• Originally published on GameSpot: Irritating Stick (PlayStation) Review

Irritating Stick is based on a Japanese game show. On the show, contestants take a giant electrical rod and maneuver it through a metal maze within a time limit. Oh, and if you touch the walls of the maze, you lose in a blast of flying sparks and electricity. Sounds like Japanese TV at its finest, right?

The game, however, doesn't translate very well. Sure, you get all the maze action, and many of the mazes and challenges are taken directly from the show. Also, the analog control moves the stick reasonably well. But you'd have a better time merely watching tapes of the TV show. Irritating Stick is most definitely aptly named.

There is a large variety of courses, thanks to the artificial intelligence mode, which generates random courses (using various preset track configurations) that get increasingly difficult as you succeed. Eventually, you'll get to tracks that have giant moving robots in the middle of them. Here, you'll have to maneuver deftly past the bots' moving parts. On TV, the unveiling of the bots is done fairly well, complete with smoke machines and other appropriate oohs and aahs. Here, an attempt is made to mimic the unveiling, but it just comes across, as much of the game does, as incredibly silly.

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