Don’t hate product placement, hate bad product placement. It’s okay to not like product placement in titles that don’t suit it, but it’s not an aspect of a product that you need to boycott. We’ve gone from a time where developers pay to have certain items in their game to a time where corporations are shoveling money into the mouths of publishers just to see their brand-new Nissan on a billboard next to a checkpoint. It’s a shame then that this specific game has gotten a lot of flak from other critics for what they call blatant product placement, but isn’t that the point? It’s a game for kids, it’s supposed to look like one. It’s fun for fun’s sake, and I’m completely okay with it. No one cared when Dr Who was teaming up with Sonic the Hedgehog because it was all in the confines of a LEGO game, so why should anyone care that I’m driving over a simple box of Hungry Hungry Hippos. Micro Machines World Series is a game that uses its product placement as a strength much like the LEGO game series, it uses things that you recognize to create an intriguing and solid theme with its art. If I saw a bottle of Dominic Toretto’s favourite beer holding up pillars of building blocks, I’d be wondering what kind of parents this kid had seeing a random box of Krispy Kremes somewhere on the track wouldn’t make sense in the toybox scene and, again, what kind of parent would give a kid an entire box of Krispy Kremes all to themselves! Micro Machines is supposed to be a toy box and the surprisingly large amount of product placement works because they all fit within the theme. Like I said earlier, product placement works when the products within the medium fit within the theme. (Seriously Randy, please stop you’re scaring the children.) When I’m drifting around the corner of a track made out of the box for Hungry Hungry Hippos, or when I’m playing the arena mode where I’m literally firing NERF bullets at other toy cars on the actual game of Hungry Hungry Hippos, it brings with it a sense of childhood wonder. It’s a game where toys come to life, without Randy Newman creepily singing to you about how you’ve got a friend in him. It makes the entirety of Micro Machines feel more authentic. #Micro machines world series skins windows#Mostly because it’s a Windows Phone and they’re all a bit naff. #Micro machines world series skins android#I enjoy old Godzilla movies for Pete’s sake, but I do find it very hard to believe that hundreds of people are using a Windows Phone without a single iPhone or Android in sight. I can suspend my disbelief a lot when it comes to entertainment. Christ, it’s a Goddamn Microsoft Surface! But what would you know? Every *single* character in Quantum Break is a Microsoft loyalist! Computer? It’s running Windows! What phone do they have? A Windows Phone! Oh, that’s a nifty looking laptop, what kind is it? Well, Jesus H. Remember Quantum Break, the Microsoft exclusive game? It’s a great game with a story spanning multiple locations and even timelines. That’s not to say there aren’t times when product placement is so heavy that it rips apart the boundaries of expectations and simply becomes implausible. Everyone has a favorite beverage, why can’t his be Corona? Why should it affect me all that much? Honda could exist in the future! I’m the type of audience who finds it endearing how often Vin Diesel’s Dominic Toretto keeps lambasting the audience how much he loves Corona in the Fast and Furious movies. #Micro machines world series skins movie#In Ghost in the Shell’s case, it didn’t detract from the movie as much as it just made me laugh. I don’t particularly mind product placement in the worst of scenarios, but that’s probably because I find it funny. The bike cuts through the wind, neon lights flash against her visor the camera quickly wraps around to the front of the vehicle when – BAM – a huge, blatant Honda logo is shoved right in your face. As the protagonist Major is about to retaliate against the antagonists, as she’s about the fight back quite literally “against the system”, actress Scarlet Johansson jumps on a high-tech motorcycle and bombs down the highway. I remember a fairly recent example of the age-old money-making practice occurring in the 2016 live-action adaptation of Ghost in the Shell. Product placement is a silly little thing.
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