THE ADVENTURES OF COOKIE & CREAM WILL RUIN YOUR RELATIONSHIP.
Having said that, let me clarify. If you never want to speak to your father, mother, brother, or sister again, sit down and play The Adventures of Cookie & Cream with them. If you want to leave your girlfriend, wife, or husband and don’t know how to do it, then the two of you should sit down and playThe Adventures of Cookie & Cream. You’ll never speak to each other again. If you think you’ve found true, eternal love, play The Adventures of Cookie & Cream, and your life, and the love you have found, will fall apart like shattered glass.
This game is directly responsible for the separations of Angelina Jolie and Billy Bob Thornton, Jennifer Aniston and Brad Pitt, Britney Spears and Kevin Federline, Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck, and more recently (and most devastatingly), Miley Cyrus and Nick Jonas. These are the world’s richest and most beautiful people, and if they lose their shit over The Adventures of Cookie & Cream, what kind of hope do you have? You’re a broke-ass videogame nerd. Don’t believe me? Are you currently reading the FREE edition of GameCola? The prosecution rests.
This is a puzzle game that relies solely on cooperation. In a split screen, you control a bunny, either Cookie or Cream, and your partner controls the other. The object is to navigate an obstacle course, moving from the bottom of the screen to the top. Only, you cannot get past the obstacles by yourself. Your partner has to do something on their side of the screen to allow you to pass on your side, and vice versa.
The courses are timed, and you start with 100 seconds. Every time you or your partner die or get hit by an enemy, though, you lose 20 seconds. If you stand around waiting for your partner to solve the riddle so you can move forward, you get attacked and lose more time. Oh, sure, you can pick up clocks for more time, but if your partner can’t figure out what the hell is happening on their side of the screen, all you can do is watch the counter run down as you run around in circles.
This is hands-down the most frustrating circumstance in existence.
Allow me to give you an example:
“OK, there is a Venus fly trap in front of me. No, I can’t get around him. Use that phonograph. Yeah, that phonograph…. Yeah, it looks like an old time-y record player. It’s a phonograph, you—fuck, I’m being attacked—you have to turn the crank…. Grab the crank by pushing the button…. THERE ARE ONLY TWO FUCKING BUTTONS AND IT’S NOT THE JUMP BUTTON. OK, OK. I’m sorry. You have to turn the crank. I don’t know how, what have you tried? Well, that’s obviously not working, so I’d stop doing that…. Why are you still doing that? Stop doing that…. It’s a crank, so you have to grab the crank—YES, WITH THE ACTION BUTTON—and then turn the crank by moving the stick back and forth…. Jesus Christ, let me show you how to—FUCK, I’m being attacked AGAIN—oh, look, we ran out of FUCKING TIME AGAIN! GAH!”
Do you see what I mean? This is not even five minutes of gameplay. If you beat a level, you are rewarded with the euphoric satisfaction that you and your partner triumphed over difficulty, and that teamwork has strengthened your bond together! So you play another level, and it starts all over again…but it gets worse each time.
Halfway through the game, one of you may even end up dead. Might be you; might be her. Might be suicide; might be homicide. It’s anyone’s guess! One thing is for sure: if you are the survivor, you’ll pass this game along to your friends. Misery loves company. That’s how it happened to me. It was given to me by someone formerly in a couple who recommended I play it with my girlfriend.
Care to guess how that worked out for me?
