Urban Yeti - How Many Miles Must A Yeti Walk, Before He Finds A Mate?

1/07/24

Of all the things I come back to, it’s Urban Yeti.

In a way, you could argue there are four kinds of games on the GBA. The big budget, first party titles everyone remembers - Pokemon, Mario, Zelda. The classics. Then there’s the diamonds in the rough, fantastic yet generally unknown; Astro Boy, or Rebelstar Tactical Command. Then there’s the shovelware, barely worth a play, abhorrent BS like Bratz or American Idol… and finally the enjoyable jank, so bad it’s good, so weird it’s charming.

Oh, and then there’s Urban Yeti, the mythical category all its own.

Urban Yeti might hold the dubious honour of being the strangest game on the GBA. Beyond its ‘narrative’ - which is genuinely the most insane thing I’ve seen in some time - Urban Yeti is a sandwich with varying parts that, whilst perhaps not making a particularly good - hell, even average - game, creates a truly unique, almost unmissable experience. Maybe not for the reasons it was aiming for, and certainly not for everyone, but I digress. It’s a game whispered from the far corners of the internet, a title that defies explanation and description alike, rejecting such concepts as good or bad; it is simply Urban Yeti.

Well, it’s not good, either, but that’s a bit beside the point, no?

Now, if you ever seen one of the classic editions - or, specifically, the GBA entry - of Grand Theft Auto, that’s kind of what Urban Yeti is - a top down, ‘open-district’ game where you’re given free reign to wander around the city whilst hunting down the various goals our titular Yeti has set for himself. It’s a bizarrely modern, ahead of it’s time format for a game as synonymous with ‘bargain bin’ as Urban Yeti is. And yet, there’s genuinely no reason for having these huge open environments in the game - the progression is totally linear (go here, do this, do a minigame, next zone), instead of GTA’s pick your next mission structure. All it does is birth the idea that this is a much larger, much more in-depth game than the cover would imply, but instead it delivers the exact opposite. Seriously this game is like an hour, half and a half tops, long game, assuming you don’t get stonewalled by it’s more frustrating moments. Full disclosure, the game runs *terribly*, barely hitting what feels like 10 FPS, and probably most of that has to do with the sheer size and pseudo-3D of the top-down world with all it’s moving parts. I’m not implying a better performing game would particularly improve Urban Yeti, but if the game is functioning this poorly because (I assume) of it’s open-world, why did the developers stick with it? I’m obsessed with this structure, because why does a 1-2 hour game need it!? It’s insanity. Some will love it - probably for it’s innately bizarre nature, like me - others will hate it, but I for the latter, I don’t think anything will save Urban Yeti.

But what do you actually *do* in Urban Yeti? Well… not much, really. The game basically has two modes; you’ll be running about the open-zone environments, moving towards specific goals to progress Urban Yeti’s insane quest to find a mate. In these zones, you’ll have to avoid cops trying to shoot you (average Yeti experience), dodge cars that’ll run you over, and punch your way through various feral animals, like cats or rats, that’ll wanna snack on your Yeti-goods. There’s a slight dash of platforming, with sometimes requiring you to find your way up buildings to find certain items, but I hesitate to use even that term because the game is so ‘pseudo-3D’ that it really just feels more akin to walking into ‘higher’ boxes by walking along small planks to go ‘up’. It just rather epitomises how janky the game is to play, at the best of times. Cars will get stuck on you, hitting and draining your health almost constantly, leading to frequent deaths you really can’t work around. To make matters worse, Urban Yeti’s punches never really seem to take anyone down, making it a better idea to just run away from everything. Thankfully, the game’s got a simple password system that’ll jump you back to the exact ‘mission’ you were up to, and they aren’t random strings of characters so you don’t really need to take notes to keep your progress.

I can’t quite bring myself to hate the open-zone setting of the game, simply for the fact that an assumedly tiny studio managed to get one functioning (quality notwithstanding) on the GBA of all things is a merit all it’s own. Plus, it’s just a monument to the fact that so many elements seem tacked on for no real reason than for a laugh - why is there a 24 hour clock!? It’s ridiculous, all of it, and I love it. All of these insane elements all blend together into a game that isn’t really that fun to play, but is strange, unusual, and flat out unique enough that you just gotta keep going and decide for yourself. ‘Is there a reason this game has such large maps?’ No. No there is not, beyond it being really, really funny. And, honestly, I think that epitomises the idea behind the game as a whole - is it funny? Then throw it in.

But, like I said, you’re not just running around in this half-baked psuedo open-world. The other half of the game consists of everyone’s favourite GBA filler-material - minigames! Oh… Oh boy. Let’s get the facts out of the way; these minigames *suck*. Despite all featuring totally different styles of gameplay, they universally are clunky and frustrating to engage with - yes, somehow even more than the standard open-zone sections. In one, you’re tasked with a Dinner-Dash style minigame, where you have to prepare certain meals, slide them down a long counter, and collect the tips left behind - BEFORE the next person in line reaches it and steals it, but you can’t miss employees, or they’ll beat you up, stun ‘ya, and you’ll prob lose your trip anyway! Whilst there aren’t many minigames in this half and a half experience, they’re long enough, frustrating enough, and honestly, hard enough to send your forward momentum in Urban Yeti to a grinding halt. Seriously, even thinking about the term ‘Yeti Discus’ gives me a headache. These minigames suck, but at the very least, they’re as weird as everything else in this game.

What’s that? Yeti Discus? What’s weird about that? It’s just a little segment where you get abducted by the Yeti UFO to compete in the Yeti Discus championship because some other Yeti is pissed off at ‘ya. Y’know. Normal stuff.

I think the thing that *saves* the minigames, and the game as a whole as I’ve previously conveyed, is the insanity that *is* Urban Yeti. Not just the game, but everything. All right, the basic premise - Urban Yeti wants to get it down with a mate. Hilarious, but it’s an understandable, basic premise. Nothing encapsulates how hilariously stupid this game is more than the very first piece of dialogue you get in your search for your mate - to directly quote:

*bold* You can’t go there Urban Yeti! It’s a Toll Bridge! Looks like you need a job. Find a newspaper and check the classifieds. *bold*

What follows is ‘climbing’ a building, grabbing a paper, and then taking a job working at a soup kitchen to earn 4 - and only 4 - dollars to cross the toll bridge. What follows is a simple raising of the comedic stakes, which includes being abducted by the Yeti UFO, engaging in the Yeti Discus Championship, and catching chickens for the Yeti farm. It’s such basic, almost low-class humour that is trying to illicit laughs just based on how frankly *stupid* it is. And I gotta say… it got me nearly every time.As I’ve already implied, I think Urban Yeti is *awful* to play, with the stupidly janky open-zone sections, and frankly poor minigames, but it’s all saved by how hilariously dumb its ‘writing’ is. I don’t want to punch down on the developers, but I think they were totally aware that this is a janky budget-tier title, and so they just went all in on making it as silly as possible, and it landed perfectly for me.

As I said earlier, it is impressive that they got a decently ambitious title like this running on the GBA, especially when you realise that this is a decently small studio. Sadly, but not unexpectedly, this comes at the cost of both visual fidelity and audio quality - though I don’t think the latter was going to be helped by having a less crunchy sound. It’s also not really much to look at, with its top down-perspective making it pretty hard to identify anything that isn’t a car - are those cats or rats? No idea. Some of the visuals - especially the ‘dialogue’ sections, which are just Urban Yeti’s face superimposed over a short of the city, lean more into the territory of comedically horrifying, which just kind of adds to the fever-dream nature that truly underlines Urban Yeti as a game from start to finish.

This has to be one of my most rambling reviews yet, because I find it so hard to review Urban Yeti. The decisions made behind the game, its bizarre ambition, and genuinely hysterically stupid writing stands in opposition to the fact that engaging with almost any element of the title is a drag, and the vast majority of the game falls flat on it’s face as a result. There is nothing like this game on the GBA - hell, few like it at all in gaming as a whole. It’s a bad game, unfun, but almost mesmerising in its insanity. If you’re interested in seeing the full span of what the Game Boy Advance has to offer, you’d be doing yourself a disservice to skip over Urban Yeti - but I’m not going to deny that actually playing it will be a bit of a disservice to yourself, too.

What a game to come back to, huh? Reviews will be a bit slower as I get back into the groove of things, but I’m feeling pretty reenergized! Plus, we hit game 70 next time! Crazy! As always, you can find me over at Twitter @Lemmy7003, or you can email me at mgeorge7003@hotmail.com if you have any questions or requests! Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you next time!