I've yet to see the movie, but this game doesn't entice me to hurry up and rent it.
And remember to Comment, Rate, and SUBSCRIBE!!! :)
It's time for the Astro Boy: The Video Game review! For the Wii!
Ah, another movie game. Now I have not seen the movie this game was based on, so I'm not going to be judging the story, even though I'm pretty sure it's the story from the movie. Here's the premise of what the story is in the game. Toby, the young son of a scientist is brought to his father's work to see the unveiling of a new robot. Everything goes fine, except for this one minor detail, something goes horribly wrong, and Toby is killed. His father creates a robot that looks just like Toby, named Astro, and in addition to Toby's memories, also has a few special abilities such as flying and shooting lasers from his hands. That's all I'm going to say about the story.
This is a 2D action-platformer, and there are two types of levels in the game. There's the action-platforming levels, and there's the action-shooter levels. As you go through the action-platforming levels, you'll use hand-to-hand combat and your special abilities to fight against other robots. Fighting hand to hand does deal a good amount of damage, but it becomes so boring. Good thing you can shoot lasers and use your, Butt Cannon? Ok…to fight the enemies with in addition to hand-to-hand, otherwise these levels would become terribly dull! Now as for the shooter levels, although they're more fun than the platforming levels, it doesn't make up for the overall monotonous and dry gameplay of this game.
Throughout the platforming levels, you can find upgrades which will enhance one of your four stats, such as Health, Jets, Laser, or Power. These upgrades do help, but the game is already pretty easy, and the upgrades make it even easier. But we can't stop there with the easiness, and here's why: When you start attacking an enemy, little orbs of light will start to fly to you. These orbs add to how many times you can use a Super ability, because you can only have a max of ten times, such as using your Arm Cannon. Uhh…ok, anyway…(Link at the top!) :) One of your Super abilities is to heal yourself. Now healing yourself adds to the easy factor of the game, but that's not what I'm talking about. When you heal yourself, any type of projectile shot at you that's on screen, whether it's a missile, or an energy shot that looks like a red blood cell, can be converted into energy to restore your health, which, yet again, decreases the difficulty of this game. But we're not done yet! How about unlimited lives? Yep, it's got that too! Oh and don't forget about not dying when you fall down a crevasse! Now that's easy enough right? Nope! How could this game become even easier? Why 2-Player Co-op Mode of course! This game is just, too, easy!
Now even though the game is a chocolate frosting covered cakewalk, there are quite a bit of annoyances which adds to the frustrating factor, not the difficulty factor. For one, I thought the camera was too far away. Well, I guess it didn't make the game frustrating, it just helped make it boring. Ok, now the real frustrations were one, you can't defend yourself. Enough said. And two, sometimes it was hard to tell what was going on, from the many enemies on screen.
The graphics are bleh! It doesn't look that good, especially the cut-scenes! They look grainy and just not appealing to look at. The only thing I liked about the graphics were the times when you were about to perform a Super ability, which only lasts about one second, so, yeah…it's pretty sad.
The controls are pretty good for the most part. You'll use the Wiimote/Nunchuck combo to play. You can either play with the standard controls, or you can mix and match to your liking, which is pretty cool, but the controls are not hard at all to get used to. You can also use the motion sensor of the Wiimote to heal yourself by giving it a little flick, but I just used the down button on the D-Pad which was easy enough.
Not only is this game super easy, but it's super short! My siblings and I beat it in less than three hours! And as for replayability, well I guess going back and finding every power up could be one, and there is an arena mode to see how long you can last, but seriously, I highly doubt you'll care enough to do those things.
The music, script, and the in-game cut-scenes were so annoying! There's like two or three songs in the whole game which became a pain to listen to. Now Crazy Taxi only had three songs in it, but at least they were catchy! The script was poorly written which made some of the voice acting sound bad, and the in-game cut-scenes sucked. What I mean is, there was only like three animations for each character which just tells me the developers were being lazy. Oh and also, the lip-syncing was horrible! It was like watching a foreign film with English dubs. It doesn't affect the gameplay, but it's just not fun to watch.
Astro Boy: The Video Game is not that good. While the Super abilities, shooter levels, Co-op mode, and controls save this from being a terrible game, the overall fun factor is drowned out by monotonous, dull, and super easy gameplay. And it doesn't help when the game is really short, and the camera, music, script, and in-game cut-scenes are really annoying.
This is why I don't really care for movie games, and I don't recommend this one. However, this game could be an ok weekend rental for young kids who enjoyed the movie. To everyone else though, I say stay away from it.
This game gets a 2.25/5 with the title of Bad.
Ratings:
0=COMPLETE AND ULTIMATE FAIL!!!!!
.25-.75=Total Crap!
1-1.5 = Horrible!
1.75-2.5=Bad
2.75-3.5=Good
3.75-4.25=Awesome!
4.5-4.75=EPIC!!!
5=MONUMENTALLY AND SUPREMELY PERFECT!!!!!