Quite possibly the fastest way I have unlocked a platinum trophy, and equally the quickest turnaround for a review, My Name Is Mayo took a total of 40 minutes to download and 100%.
It’s not like it’s a new game or nuffink, but while scouring the PlayStation Store for some adventure games and the odd sale, My Name Is Mayo, from Green Lava Studios, popped up, and at 99p, I didn’t give it a second thought.
A few YouTube videos have suggested the easiest games to unlock a platinum trophy, and I remember PlayStation Access covering the game as a bona fide way to do so. But the game was intriguing: was there substance, or did they water this mayo down with a simple gimmick?
Pass the Mayo
If you’re unfamiliar with the game, let me explain it to you. There’s a jar of mayonnaise on screen. With the cursor, shaped like a hand, you repeatedly tap the X button while hovering over the jar. That’s it. There aren’t any modifiers – if the goal is 10,000 taps, you have to press the X button 10,000 times. There are a few milestones thrown in along the way, however – in-game achievements if you will.
First up are the facts. When you pass a certain amount of taps, you’ll unlock a ‘fun fact’ of some random information. I thrive on these to pad out equally absurd anecdotes. Alas, there aren’t that many to see – maybe half a dozen?
Next are the stories. A line or two is provided giving the premise of the story; a tale of romance, the weather and learning to play the guitar. They’re simple anecdotes that unlock the more you click the jar. To access the stories in My Name Is Mayo, as well as the facts, you press the triangle button in-game, select the next in the series, and once you tapped the jar enough, the next part of the story unlocks.
Inanimate Condiments
Here’s a spoiler: the jar will stay in the centre of the screen for the majority of the game. It doesn’t grow legs and crawl dungeons or enter a quest to find a romantic partner. The jar will, however, change into other condiments, get a makeover with fruit, plus there are a few animated assets like falling cats and crunchy turds.
What else is there to know? There’s a counter at the top right of the screen to indicate how many times you’ve tapped the mayo. I take pleasure to inform you that if you exit out the game or stop pressing the button, your score will remain intact. That said, you’ll finish this in one sitting.
I’m more of a ketchup person than mayo, but I’m a free spirit and was willing to try My Name Is Mayo. The graphics are great, considering they’re mostly inanimate condiments, the music retro, but gets annoying after ten minutes as does the sound of the clinking jar. In the end, I muted it. It’s simple but keeps you off the streets for a short period, so forget about lighting up that cat. Sod it – do it anyway.
Accelerated Arthritis
Continually tapping the X button will most likely take its toll and in the brief time I played My Name Is Mayo, I took two short breaks and had moments of slowdown while adding notes for this review. The last time I did this much one-handed typing was when I entered my first chatroom as a teenager.
My Name Is Mayo is a novelty. When you first start it up, you do question if this is a game and that’s all there is to it. After five or ten minutes, you start questioning whether it’s worth your time, but as a completionist, aim to unlock all the stories. But when it got to 6,000 taps or so, I was done with it, and My Name Is Mayo became a chore. I don’t play online, so don’t need to show off my trophy collection (it’s rubbish), but as it’s clear 10,000 taps is the goal, I knew I could do it, then delete the game.
Could you consider this a party game? Sure, but it will last about five minutes. When you’ve unlocked everything, there’s no incentive – the game doesn’t change other than a few philosophical pithy quotes. For 99p, I don’t regret paying for My Name Is Mayo, but it is a gimmick and in my opinion, has no replay value – not even in the sense of loading it up to show a friend. You could probably tell them about it, and it’d be quicker.
A note on replay value, the current top score at the time of writing (15:02) is 331810976. I don’t know how to process that.
On that basis, while this is a review, I’m omitting a score for My Name Is Mayo as I don’t think it would accurately represent the game. It’s more like a mini-game such as BlipBlop in Mosaic. Is it worth 99p? Well, that depends if you pay for your platinum trophies, as this one is guaranteed – 81.2% of people have unlocked on PSN.
