Child-cheat uses fist instead of head
In 2003 Sony had a rather fantastic idea: to create a game that used a miniature motion-capture video camera peripheral to transport the player behind their TV screen, as a way of interacting with a broad variety of slightly bizarre mini-games. Eyetoy Play was praised for its originality, as well as the sheer, unadulterated fun it brought. Then, in 2004, Rebel Games had another fantastic idea: to copy everything introduced by Eyetoy Play and to release it on the PC in a box with a different design on it.
So here we have Camgoo. It’s for the PC and it is a shamelessly blatant rip-off of the established Sony favourite. That’s not to say this is necessarily a bad thing, Eyetoy Play, after all, is a very good game. And Camgoo is just like it, except with a Philips webcam instead of a Sony one.
Get in there and slap some pirates
However, considering that the developers must have been aware of the inevitable comparisons to Sony’s Eyetoy, it’s surprising to see that nothing that’s actually new has been added. In fact, the package is considerably less substantial than Sony’s. There are only half of Play’s mini-games, with only six separate challenges, all of which could be irrefutably accused of direct plagiarism.
There’s Treasure Trouble, which involves slapping little pirates. There’s Cam Kong, which involves slapping little helicopters. There’s Pixie Presents, which copies the idea of flipping and mirroring your image to make everything more confusing when you proceed to try slapping some boxes. Then Beatmaster, Keepie Uppie and Boxabot do exactly as you would expect them to: and exactly as their Sony counterparts had done previously.
