National Treasure Review

Mobile games based on movie licenses often must overcome challenges that original properties are never subjected to. For instance, developers might be ordered to meet unreasonable deadlines to release for opening weekends, placed under rigid creative controls, or, in some rare cases, have their work scrutinized by a film's director. Daunting though they may be, none of these difficulties constitute an excuse for selling a poor game like National Treasure. This platforming/exploration game, which is based on the forthcoming Nicolas Cage flick of the same name, attempts to combine basic side-scrolling gameplay with some cursory maze navigation--but it's far too short and sloppily constructed to succeed.

National Treasure is a really boring hour of gameplay.

This game casts you as Cage's character in the movie, Benjamin Franklin Gates. It covers Gates' quest to recover the secret treasure of America's founders. You prod Gates toward his destiny through three levels, where you must escape a burning ship with a special artifact, steal the Declaration of Independence from the National Archives, and finally run through a sprawling network of caves to locate the fabled cache.

Along the way, you'll have to perform the standard suite of tame platforming activities to get where you're going. These activities include jumping over small fires and bunches of spikes, levering yourself over crates, clambering hand over hand across ropes, zapping guards with stun guns, and finding and unlocking doors with keys. None of the obstacles in your way--whether they are guards, packs of small animals that sort of look like rats, or spikes--are dangerous or challenging in the least, because they cause little damage. Although there's a possibility you might die after repeated encounters with them over the course of a level, your five lives per stage are sufficient to remove any real challenge from the game.

Moreover, the game's basic mechanics aren't engaging at all. Your chief tool in the game is a crowbar, which you'll use to jimmy open treasure chests and elevator doors. If you tap on the 5 key repeatedly, Gates will start halfheartedly wiggling the crowbar around with one hand. Strangely, applying this motion to some barrels in the first level will cause them to explode and disappear. If you use the crowbar to open a booby-trapped chest on the last level, you'll have a very, very slow countdown beginning from three to get clear. Also, the National Archives level offers you a chance to sneak past guards using pools of shadow to hide and then using the stun gun on them from behind. But there's really no reason to do this--all you need to do to dispatch a guard is crawl toward him and use the stun gun on his knees. He'll be unable to defend himself or run away.

The remainder of the gameplay involves maundering through the stages, looking for whatever it is you need to get to the next level. The first stage is a straightforward procession through a burning ship, and the last two areas are big labyrinths that force you to go through every door and occasionally backtrack to find the goods. This search for keys and artifacts occasionally borders on being interesting--especially in the last level, which is laid out on five large floors full of barriers and switchbacks--but it's mostly a dull trial-and-error process. If you walk through all the doors in a level and backtrack as necessary, you'll have no problems completing the missions. Most gamers should be able to finish the three levels in under an hour, which is much too fast for this type of game.

Find those keys, unlock those doors, steal those declarations.

This game's look and feel is obviously based upon Lightplay's previous platform game, Dual Threat. Fortunately, National Treasure's visual and performance aspects are much better than Dual Threat's on the LG VX7000, even if its core gameplay isn't. Gates moves with a nicely animated flair, and he'll break into a run if you jog in a single direction for a moment or two. The game also operates very fluently, without any jagged scrolling or crowd slowdown. On the other hand, National Treasure's bland background graphics and character art fit in a little too well with its unenthusiastic gameplay. The only sound the game makes is the really ugly synth shot associated with your stun gun. There's no title theme, explosion sounds, bullet noise, or anything else. Even if this is a step up over the totally silent Dual Threat, it's still terrible.

Overall, National Treasure is a hasty film advertisement that's apparently intended to be a part of Disney's prerelease blitz, and not much else. The game even has a field for inputting cheat codes, which will presumably be provided by Disney's cross-marketing efforts. So, unless you are obsessed with all things Nic Cage, there's absolutely no reason to buy this game.