Cheesy
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 Pretty cheesy, isn't it?
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""This game is a jack-of-all-trades, yet a master of bugger all. You'd think that one mode these people tackled would at least work correctly, but they just don't. Not one of them, not one of them is even slightly playable or tolerable, and there are so many jarring and unnatural gameplay styles here that it's just painful how wrong they get all of them! It seems like this was far too overambitious for the early days of the PS1, and honestly, with how broken the controls are for the most part, it just feels lazy and entirely rushed on every aspect. I'm at least glad the public and the game makers knew how shit this probably was and I'm happy that, after this game, Cheesy went nowhere at all, unlike a certain bobcat. And I'm at least happy they knew when to put this mouse down out of his misery, and that he is an embarrassing stain on the past of a bigger name in gaming today. He existed for one game and died. And I'm honestly happy about that.""
— Caddicarus
Cheesy is a platform game published by Ocean Software and developed by CTA Developments for the PlayStation. It was released in Europe on November 1996 and on July 24, 1997 in Japan. Cheesy is a third-person, 3D platform game that stars a mouse named Cheesy who has been captured by a mad scientist for his genetic experiments. However, aliens attack the castle and in the commotion Cheesy escapes.
Plot
The central character in this game is a mouse called Cheesy, who is trapped inside Dr. Chem's castle where he must walk the treadmill to provide power for the mad scientist's genetic experiments.
However, aliens attack the castle, and in the commotion Cheesy escapes. Cheesy has to navigate through 24 levels and fight mutated creatures, huge spiders, balance a mine-cart through derelict tracks, and escape flames inside a burning chimney.
Why It's Cheesy (In a Bad Way)
- Confusing introduction and cut-scenes. The description on the back of the box also doesn’t help since it’s so badly translated it’s almost impossible to understand what is going on.
- Awful and crippled controls.
- The front cover art directly spoils the game’s ending! (see point #22)
- Once Cheesy starts moving, he doesn't stop until either 4 seconds pass or he runs into a wall or any other solid object.
- Sonic 2006 levels of loading screens: every time you go to another level or exit out said level you have to go through a loading screen that lasts for 10 seconds.
- Poor graphics and animations, even by early PS1 standards. If you look closely you can clearly see that Cheesy's arms are not even connected to the torso.
- Cheesy looks a lot different in the game than he does on the box art. On the box art, you can see that he looks like a mouse, but in-game, he looks more like a kangaroo. This is mostly due to the bad graphics.
- None of the enemies stand out from the scenery and some are lazily designed.
- Barely anything this game is animated, so if you stop moving from within the game you could think that the game crashed or froze in place.
- Poor and insipid level design.
- Some enemies don't disappear when they die.
- Very bland and uninspired bosses.
- At a certain point in the game, Cheesy acquires a gun from one of the aliens. Although the gun has unlimited ammo, it doesn't do much since the projectiles aren't visible, making it hard to know where you're actually firing, not to mention the aiming isn't very accurate due to the poor controls.
- The Password screen is a pain to use; a slight press of one of the directional buttons will cause the whole circular password screen to spin at supersonic velocity.
- Inconsistent when it comes to what kind of game it wants to be. The hub worlds are 3D with Resident Evil-style tank controls, but most of the actual levels are side-scrolling, one level is a top-down shooter, and another is an on-rails level where Cheesy is riding on a leaf through a sewer.
- During said sewer level, if you hit an obstacle you die, and colliding with a wall bounces Cheesy in the complete opposite direction out of your control.
- In total, there are eight separate game mechanics: hub world, side-scroller, top-down shooter, river riding, minecart riding, shooting from a web, tube navigation, and flying saucer. All of them end up failing and most of them are barely ever used - sometimes as little as once.
- For the minecart and flying saucer riding levels you need immense reflexes to make it through every obstacle. The obstacles only appear at the last second for you to make a decision due to the draw distance.
- In the top-down shooter, you actually have to jump to defeat some enemies because they are too low for you to shoot as well as go over hazards. And since Cheesy gets closer to you and there's no drop shadow when you land, it becomes a mess.
- The final boss is a nauseating hold-button-to-win shooter using a gameplay mechanic that had never been utilized in the rest of the game.
- The side-scrolling levels are very maze-like, making them hard to navigate and find out where you're supposed to go next.
- WAY too dark to be a kids game. For two example:
- Near the beginning of the game one of the aliens gets crushed under a book.
- In the ending, Cheesy goes through a portal from in a pot, and right after that he gets surrounded by a bunch of mouse traps and the game ends while we hear Cheesy getting harmed by said mouse traps.
Redeeming Qualities
- The soundtrack is decent.
- The idea and concept were interesting.