CID the Dummy

CID the Dummy

"Not such a dummy now, am I?" Guess what, you still are.

Protagonist(s):	CID the Dummy
Genre(s):	Action Platform
Platform(s):	Microsoft Windows PlayStation 2 PlayStation Portable Wii Linux OS X
Release Date:	Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 2, PlayStation Portable, Wii EU: April 17, 2009 NA: July 7, 2009 Linux, OS X WW: December 18, 2013
Engine:	Vicious Engine
Developer(s):	Twelve Interactive
Publisher(s):	Oxygen Games Tweleve Interactive (digital)
Country:	Italy
Successor:	Crash Dummy

CID the Dummy is an action-platform video game developed by Twelve Interactive and published by Oxygen Games for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 2, PlayStation Portable, and Wii in 2009. It was re-released via Steam for Microsoft Windows, Linux, and OS X.

Why It's a Dummy

The CID in the title actually stands for Crash Impact Dummy. This makes the title dumb and redundant, since the entire title would be Crash Impact Dummy the Dummy.
The music on the game's Wii startup page is a rip off of Fatboy Slim's "Weapon of Choice".
- The music of one of the levels is a shady ripoff of the battle music from Final Fantasy VII.
The story is just a complete rip-off of Mega Man's. It's about two scientists, a good one and an evil one, once colleagues and now bitter rivals. After an experiment gone wrong, D.Troit, the evil one, creates an army of sentient robots and kidnaps B. M. Werken's daughter. Werken retaliates by creating a Crash Test Dummy, or Crash Impact Dummy (CID, hence the title), to defeat D. Troit and his armies and save Werken's daughter.
- The game also starts with a more-than-5 minutes-long series of opening cutscenes, most of them completely pointless.
The voice acting barely manages to be average at best, with characters having some strange voices (for example, B. M. Werken sounds like Julia Child on crack).
CID is downright unlikeable, being very whiny and rude. He even admits in the ending that he doesn't want to be a hero, and complains about how mouthy Werken's daughter is, despite the fact that she has no mouth at all, and that this is the only time the two meet each other in the whole game.
The graphics and character models both look out of date and resemble a PlayStation or a typical old PC game. It should be noted that the game came out in 2009, at the same time many games offered much better graphics. Here's a list of games that offered better graphics:
- Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2
- New Super Mario Bros. Wii
- MLB 09: The Show
- FIFA 10
- Uncharted 2
- Batman: Arkham Asylum
- Assassin's Creed II
- Halo 3: ODST
- Borderlands
- Left 4 Dead 2, and many more.
For at least 75% of all the game, CID will always repeat his "Not such a dummy now, am I?" line. This is extremely annoying considering that CID isn't a good character in this game at all.
The Wii version presents various additional control problems:
- Basic attacks, as in punches, require the flailing of the Wiimote, but CID casually throws punches when you just barely move it. To make matters worse, when you accidentally trigger CID's attacks, he'll be locked on the attack animation and continue attacking forward, even when he's very close to any ledge and he's eventually going to fall off of it.
- CID also has a bazooka, which requires holding down the A button and moving the controller towards your shoulder like it is some sort of backscratcher. It's required to equip and unequip the bazooka every single time. It doesn't always work.
  - To make matters worse, if you happen to accidentally aim even as slightly off your target, you will not manage to hit it.
  - Not to mention, instead of allowing the player to use the Wiimote to freely hit the targets on the screen, it requires to be at the same height of the intended target. You also need to do that when you're close to them, making it utterly useless in most situations.
CID can also use stealth moves, but they are completely useless.
Some glitches allow you to walk on water, poisoned water or even lava, or project shadows on the roof.
Water levels require that you rise and lower your Wiimote to swim higher and lower, but, due to the aforementioned control problems, it's impossible not to take damage to sea mines and other obstacles.
Of course, like all Ice Worlds of respect in the rest of the gaming world, the one present in this game has slippiness, which worsens the control problems in the whole game.
- The level's final boss is a giant monster that can kill you if he grabs you, something hard to avoid with collision detection issues. Not to mention, to defeat the monster, you need to get your way through an entire, long Ice World level which also has some obstacles to get rid of which you'll need to use your bazooka.
There is also a level set in a graveyard for crash test dummies, which barely makes sense.
Not only there is fall damage, but there is instant death and Game Over-provoking fall damage. Not only does this make absolutely no sense, but one of the levels in the game also proves that CID can survive getting thrown through five brick walls, especially because he's, by natural choice, a Crash Test Dummy.
One of the levels of the game has CID ride a giant robot with a mallet, which he has to ride from Point A to Point B. To keep the robot high up, you need to hold up on the Nunchuk thumbstick, while also avoiding or destroying obstacles. However, even after beating the level, at the score screen, CID falls in the water and dies, because the player, thinking that the level is over, has been induced to let go the Nunchuk thumbstick.
The final boss looks like something that was ripped out of Sonic Adventure.
The ending is simply pathetic. After finally defeating D. Troit, CID saves Werken's daughter, only to discover she's also a Crash Test Dummy, built after Werken's real and now-dead daughter and infused with her essence. While this is a weird twist, the actual problem is that CID berates the girl he just saved, including complaining about how mouthy she is (despite not having a mouth), and to add insult to injury, this is the only time they both see and/or talk to each other in this game. This marks the apex of CID's shallow and mean-spirited character.
Much like George of the Jungle and the Search for the Secret, the game was released for the PS2 in 2009, when the PS3 had already been out for a long time. Was releasing this game on the PS3 instead of the PS2 too much to ask?

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CID the Dummy

Why It's a Dummy

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