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Baby alligators biting nipples, malfunctioning rocket skates, torn muscles, and bikini waxing. No, it’s not a weekend with Pam Anderson, but an average day for the Jackass crew. MTV’s hit series from 2000-02 showcased pranks and a variety of twisted, obnoxious, and immensely entertaining experiments endured by subjects who would normally be found at less discriminating trailer parks, asylums, or alleys. The good news is that the developers did an impressive job in picking “activities” that would meet the impeccably high standards of Johnny Knoxville, Ryan Dunn, and the rest of the gutsy gang. 

Sweet and Lowbrow

While there are different play modes in Jackass: The Game, all revolve around playing mini-games created in the spirit of the television show and its two spin-off films. The danger element is much higher in the game, but it’s entirely believable that the Jackass team would perform these stunts if they could do so without getting killed -- like high diving off a skyscraper into a vat of elephant dung or ramming bumper cars atop a building’s roof. Golf clubs, shopping carts, and pogo sticks are all featured in their own mini-games. The developers even created a system to reward players for breaking bones. By “bailing out” of certain mini-games, players can earn bonus cash for piling up injuries on a suicidal run. Broken collarbone? $200. Torn scrotum and a perforated bowel? Priceless.

The heart of the game is the MTV story mode, which is structured similarly to the Stuntman driving series. There are seven episodes to complete, each featuring five mini-games. To advance to the next episode, players have to earn the requisite cash. Each mini-game has specific goals to achieve, offering varying amounts of prize money for completing them. In the suburban wakeboarding event, for example, a manhole cover is used to “surf” busy streets while being pulled by a pickup truck. Goals include destroying mailboxes, tipping over trashcans, grinding fences, and so forth. Other racing events, from rolling down a snow-covered slope as a giant snowball to hurtling your body down a cliff, are similar in that you typically have to hit specific targets.

Rhythm and the Blues

Unfortunately, there are a few problems with these events. While they generally look nice and seem to require some skill, most objectives are so easy to complete that you can probably finish them all on a single run. Even if you can’t, the objectives you’ve already finished are saved, so you only have to focus on those you missed. It would have been far more engaging if you could perform aerial stunts or combos. The goals or tasks are unexciting and neglect several opportunities for more fun, like grinding on x-amount of cars, catching x-amount of air, knocking down x-amount of pedestrians, earning time extensions, and so forth.

Several other events consist of timing or rhythm-based challenges, where you quickly input the on-screen commands to perform dance moves (party boy), tug-of-war pulls, diving stunts, and more. These are by far the easiest events to complete and offer the least amount of replay value of the entire collection. There are also four-player challenges that involve steering bumper cars, giant balls, and so forth, which are fun since you are directly competing against other characters. The catch? The controls are a bit sluggish, which is a complaint that applies to many of the action-oriented mini-games. It often seems like there is a brief delay between button presses and your character’s movement.

Keeping it Simple

Though on the surface Jackass looks like it has strong replay value, the content is as shallow as Steve-O’s take on world peace. Players will breeze through the story mode within a day, and the challenge mode simply offers the same events with slightly higher score requirements. Even the multiplayer modes are disappointing, with no-frills round robin tournaments, an extremely limited head-to-head mode (affectionately titled “ass to ass”), and no online support. This type of game would have benefited from an Olympics-style approach, but the truth is many of the mini-games are more solo oriented than competitive. It’s a shame too, because the overall look, sound, and feel of the show is captured well, and the amount of unlockables (videos, characters, costumes, and props) will surely appeal to hardcore fans. Jackass: The Game features some delightfully demented twists on mini-games, but they are sadly too simplistic even for the beer and pretzels crowd. Even Wee Man would find this game short.

Review by: Scott Alan Marriott
Video Produced by: Joel Rubin