Jumping straight in, yes, it’s the game of the movie and let’s just say that if they had based the game around the storyline of the movie, it would have made more sense and been quite quintessentially better.
The characters, scenery, animations and all the things that should look nice, they look really nice, what is a bit weird about the game is that your ‘enemies’ are construction workers of which you zap with a gun or frazzle with a Tesla glove shocker. Then there’s the collecting of blue orbs known as B.I.N.K.E.Y. – Blue Ion Nano Kinetic EnergY, this can then be spent on upgrading Megaminds weapons to make taking out the Doom Syndicate’s lackeys out a bit easier.
Puzzles are simple enough, like putting a big battery on a switch and carrying stuff to put on specific spots and pushing boxes to reach higher levels and… you get the idea, again and again as you repeat ad infinitum. The game starts of refreshingly well with the aforementioned activities, it’s only when you realise that that is pretty much the gameplay, you become reluctant to return to the game when taking a break.
It can be a little frustrating at times when the controls don’t seem to want to do what you’re expecting them to do, even though you’re pressing the right buttons and because the gameplay is so familiar, you feel like you’re letting yourself down. Keeping calm and taking your time should get you through, it’s too easy to start losing your cool when Megamind doesn’t appear to be responding to what you’re trying to get him to do, persistence pays off.
If you’re seeking easy trophies, look no further, you’ll unlock at least ten in the first hour of playing. Not a lot of thought went into what you have to do to unlock them and with the disappointingly short amount of game time, 100% should be achievable in an afternoon session, if you manage to stick it out for that long. You’re probably reading this and thinking just how more cynical can this review be? The film is good, very good. Not great, that would be a slight exaggeration, if only the same could be said about the game which, to be fair, has great visuals and that’s all it has going for it.
There are some minigames to try to pad out the gameplay and as fun as they may be while they last, you’ll need to be pretty bored to replay them more than a few times. The controls are simple enough with the typical jump, shoot/zap and action button which sometimes needs to be pressed rapidly (usually to ‘shock’ switches to work), although the right analogue stick is used to look around, the actual amount of extra viewing area is about as much as moving your eyes to the left or right, not that you particularly need to look around much anyway.
At least the dehydrator gun was included which turns people and things into little cubes until put into contact with water and the voice acting is up to scratch, small victories in a potentially bigger title. You might get another hour out of the somewhat disconcerting multiplayer that may be fairly fun for the player controlling Megamind, not so fun for the other guy as you fight for who wants to go where.
It’s quite an easy game to ‘Platinum’ (thought it was worth a mention since this is a review of the PlayStation 3 version and was previously mentioned), so if you’re looking for a trophy boost, it’s not exactly the worst game you could play.
Dreamworks’ Megamind: Ultimate Showdown can be bought quite cheap already, meaning you’re not going to get much if you trade it in, rental is probably a better option.
Friday, January 24
