A Funny And Witty Game. I Dunno What To Put Here Other Than, This Game Is Ok.
As most of you know...Matt Groening is the creator of the Simpsons. Matt's series has had a wide fan base, but when it went to the video game world it has been known to be bad, with the exception of a few. So Matt Groening tries it again with his OTHER series.....Futurama.
Professor Farnsworth sells Planet Express to MOM, World Wide owner of MOM's Old Fashion Robot Oil. Thanks to the half of Planet Express that she gained, MOM owns 50% of the World, making her ruler. Once taken over the World (she renames it from Mother Earth to MOM Earth) she tries to take over the universe. So the Planet Express crew, consisting of: Bender, Fry, and Leela, must stop MOM from ruling the Universe.....and also Dr. Zoidberg comes in as well.
GRAPHICS : The creators of this game tried to use the cell-shading factor from popular games like Viewtiful Joe and Zelda. I was never a big fan of cell-shading to begin with, and I don't think that they did a good job in this one either. During the gameplay it self its not that bad, I can put up with the graphics playing the game, but the big problem with this cell-shading 3-d factor that they are going with is during the movie sequences. It just doesn't blend well. Some people may think its great, I just don't care for it.
The worst thing in this game BY FAR is the horrible camera. Im not going to go as far as saying its the worst in video games because its not, there are some that are far worse then this. You can control where you want the camera to go with the right analog stick, but sometimes that doesn't help you at all. For instance you have to jump a lot in this game and most of the time the camera does what it wants to do. Example: On a certain level as Fry you have to jump off some pipes that move like a teeter-toter. You have to time your jump to make it on to the other pipe. But sometimes the camera moves in front of you and you can't see the pipe, and while you are moving the camera the pipe moves downward and you fall to the ground, very frustrating. I can keep going on and on about this but I will never finish my review.
SOUND : Everything about the sound is excellent. The sound effects of the surroundings around you, the actions you do have great sound, the voice overs are excellent, and Nibbler is so darn cute. But there is one thing bad about the sound, Leela. She is so annoying on this game I had to turn my TV down until something important happened when I was playing as her. But I can't really take points away for that. They got the actual actors from the show to come in and do the voices for the characters which I like because a lot of games based on movies or TV shows get people to impersonate the actors. The sound is superb on this game.
GAMEPLAY : I have to start with the controls, because if the controls for a game suck...like where you have to hold All top buttons and press the lower buttons rapidly just to move..i'm not going to be liking it very much. The controls for this game are very good to get used to, and I like the fact that the have different controls for different characters. Fry has a weapon, Bender spins around slapping you with his arms and uses his shiny metal ass, Zoidberg rides around on some jungle animal(???) and Leela just comes right out and kicks the crap out of you, just like in the show. The villians in this game range in a wide variety...you got sludge monsters, robots, talking skeletons, walking volcano beasts, and more.....a wide variety, but weird. And they aren't to bright, its easy to figure out their why of fighting and easy to beat them. Which might be a good thing if you want it to be easy, but might be a bad thing because it might not be a challenge.
Something very frustrating, sometimes when you jump and land on a ledge, mostly as Leela with my occurrence with the game, it makes you fall off anyway when you are clearly on the platform you jumped on. The gameplay experience is tremendously ruined by the camera that I mentioned earlier in this review. The game is basically set up like most platformer games, playing as Zoidberg really reminds me of Crash Bandicoot, the levels when you are riding the hog. You might get a better experience with the game if you are a fan of the show because of some of the references they use during the gameplay. The ending is so funny, all the work they did for nothing....well Im not going to ruin it for you, you will just have to see. Overall it was good but lacked in some areas.
In the game you can collect things that will unlock movies, pictures, extras, etc. But once you get all of those things there really isn't much to do afterwards. The game is way too short. I completed it in about 4 hours, and during that time I collected all of the collectible items in the game so I had no other reason to play it.
Overall Futurama is a great game with some things lacking here and there. If you are a Futurama fan and have a PS2 or X-Box (They didn't make it on GameCube I don't think) you will probably like this because it flows well with the TV show, if you don't like Futurama, you should still play this because its a good game. But it had some major problems with the camera, and some of the frustrating elements in the gameplay.
My personal oppinion I would just go out and rent this game for a few nights. It won't take that long to complete and there really isn't much replay value. But if you are a die-hard Futurama fan(do those even exist?)and you collect everything that they have...go get the game..I think its like 19.99 at K-Mart.