I thought Finding Nemo would be fun, but a shallow plot and frustrating gameplay will produce many a broken controller!
Basically you play the plot of the movie, but you can play as many of the different characters from the movie; Nemo, Dori, Nemo's Dad etc. Usually there's a cutscene from the movie to provide some background to the gameplay and then play a short game afterwards. Most of the playing involves either a race to swim through gold rings or a side scrolling level of the ocean floor.
The side scrolling levels were pretty enjoyable and reminded me a lot of the underwater side scrolling level in Crash Bandicoot 3. By picking up multi colored pearls on the ocean floor and dragging them to their matching colored coral base further on in the level you unlock stars for that level and eventually unlock stuff in the game. But I found myself skipping them because the actual level itself was filled with rediclous deaths and finding myself back at the start of the level many times. Enemies would be in the most inconvenient places all the time.
The swimming levels were even less fun. You'd have to swim through the many gold rings, again to unlock stars to unlock items and levels. The race levels are extremely frustrating because you'd have to try to catch up to Dori or a Shark or a boat etc and the rings that appeared behind them would often fade before I was able to swim there, the rings would load too late as I had already passed them, or the current in the water would blow me off course so strongly that Id miss too many and fall behind, and have to start over again.
The surroundings in the game are very nice, the bright corals and other fish are nicely rendered for the XBox but the sounds leave much to the imagination. I did enjoy the movie Finding Nemo though, which was the only thing driving me to continue playing.
I imagine this game getting better the further on you play, but I couldn't fathom following the shark through the mine field one more time! Just to watch myself explode if the current swept me towards another mine. Even though the last level involved me jumping on these same mines. For being a game derived from a childrens movie, you would think this game would be a little easier.
Summary: Finding Nemo is enjoyable for fans who like the movie, but won't hold your attention due to the too frustrating gameplay.
Concept: 5 Play the events of the movie, and watch movie footage in between to establish a casual movie-game storyline.
Graphics: 5 The water animation looks ok, and the corals and tropical fish are bright and decent to have to look at during 80% of the game. Sometimes the rings or fish in the race levels wouldn't load in time.
Entertainment: 4 This game only held my attention for this long because I enjoyed the movie, and held hope that it would get better the further I played. A couple of the levels are fun, but mostly just too aggrivating.
Replay Value: Very Low, nothing would change everytime you'd play it. Although the replay value of each level is high because you've gotta play each one about 10 times before you pass it!
Audio: 2 The sounds during the movie footage is great! But the constant sound of what is supposed to be waves crashing only makes you wanna visit the bathroom every 15 minutes!
Controls/Playability: 3 The controls were okay for the most part, fluent swimming. But trying to control an over sensitive fish through a mine field with heavy currents taking you in every direction, trying to follow a shark leaving rings you must swim through, is the main downfall of this entire game!
Overall Ranking: 3 I really did want to enjoy this game, but how is anyone, especially the target audience (children) supposed to enjoy a game that jerks you over by being extremely frustrating? It's just not worth playing unfortunatly. I can envision a lot of children smashing controllers because of Finding Nemo.