Anyone other than the biggest of Ice Age fans should limit themselves to a rental, which that might even be too much.
(-) not enough time spent on the classic characters of the movie / repetitious / difficulty is wildly uneven / only takes a few hours to beat / useless multiplayer mode
Movie based games have always been known for getting a bad rap, obviously hideous and unapproachable games with little redeeming qualities. Ice Age Dawn of the Dinosaurs is markedly better than many of the entries out there today, but that doesn't vouch for it very much. It captures much of the appeal of the silver screened motion picture that it was based on, sporting the entire cast of anthropomorphic mammals that have newly found peace amongst each other. And young children especially, will get a kick out of it. But while the adventure in the end is a decent one, there's still plenty of things going against it that shouldn't be overlooked, regardless of your nostalgic feelings for Sied or Diego.
The gameplay aims in a lot of different directions, which you'll see through different angles as the playable characters change throughout the adventure. The majority of the time, the game is a traditional platformer, with me-lee and ranged attacks at your disposal, jumping and climbing puzzles to wrap your mind around, and it all feels very familiar. But based on what point of the storyline you're reaching, you'll also find yourself as Sid rolling an egg at high speed across the icy caps to safety, like something you'd recognize from Super Monkey Ball. It's fast paced and fun, and demands some quick reflex input from your part. And the game frequently changes its view to Scrat who's always minding his own irrelevant business, trying to get an acorn like always, but this time is conflicted by a secret admirer. You play these levels like a 2D side-scrolling game, which although they're very simplistic by design, they're a good time as well.
There's constant changing in your objective, but it isn't so diverse that you won't know what's going on. For example, at the end of one of Sid's adventures, like where he's preparing a park for Mammy the Mammoth by somehow putting mud onto sharp rocks and leaves onto jagged boulders (which I hardly understand how that would keep his children safe rather than inspire them to gleefully jump in and get themselves hurt), you'll encounter a dinosaur and the focus will change entirely, to a chase down from frontal view and you're given limited distance on how to avoid death pits that may appear. As a new character, Buck the Weasel, you also get the opportunity to face these beasts head on, with the help of his whipping tale and a multitude of different guns in his arsenal. They're of questionable worth, like the honey gun, which you'll only need when you see a spore gate and you need to stop the flow to get through, and others are nonsensical, like throwing strawberries that somehow explode on impact like a frag grenade.
While having all this variety initially sounds like a good thing, the game seems to reuse a lot of this content. Seid will get in a chase with two different dinosaurs, and will offer nearly the exact same experience each time. And each of the beasts that Buck bouts with have the exact same slow minded tactics, like making a lethargic charge without ever changing direction then slowly turning back for another hit when they miss. Each of Scrat's levels are also essentially the same. It's a shame that while the famous smack talking Rhinos from the first move make an appearance, they don't really act as a boss or anything. They're just used to break boulders after you as Seid throw mud on them and temporarily high-jack them and make them run into it. That's a sad missed opportunity.
The problem isn't the wide range of different character's you'll have to learn how to use, it's always interesting mixing old with new, but rather the degree of their usage. While Sid could widely be considered the protagonist, he only has a few playable characters at the beginning and very brief entrances later on, few and far between. Even more disappointingly, Mammy the Mammoth and Diego are only shown for literally a few minutes a piece, which this is disheartening especially because Diego's chase with the rabbit could have easily been synchronized to a different, more fleshed out experience, like chasing a herd of dinosaurs away or something. Scat has a few decent-length outings like he so should. But the long end of the stick seems to have been given to Buck the Weasel, which is annoying for a number of reasons.
There are some principles in Buck's appearances that are enjoyable, like the railed sequences of running up the vines and avoiding obstacles, and using his whipping tail to clutch to a vine and swing to the next whip can be thrilling, and jumping from rail to rail can be thrilling if the momentum permits. But compared to the rest of the game, these levels last way too long. Not only that, there are even some camera problems, it'll often get stuck downward or inconveniently tilt while you're jumping, which weirdly doesn't happen to any other character. While the ability to climb up walls is an interesting concept, some glitches get in the way, like a part when you're supposed to jump between two walls and climb side-ways across a wall, Buck will occasionally attempt to latch on to an unclimbable wall and fall down to his doom.
And throughout the experience, despite having the most time of any of the playable characters, Buck seems to have been given the short end of the stick. Most of the game is notoriously easy, practically to the point where it's holding your hand and slowly guiding you through the way, and earning you plenty of trophies in the process. But Buck deals with more than his earned share of treacherous bosses, one incident demands you to free Sid and Diego from a plant that constantly spawns other plants that act like turrets, and vines that leach from the ground. You'll have to deal with this boss in a large number of phases, from destroying the turrets, destroying the vines, destroying more turrets, peeling off the seal of the plant, destroying different turrets while avoiding comets from the sky, and covering yourself with goo and entering the plant to rescue the rest of the team. Considering that the likely demographic for those who want to play this game are children around eight to ten years old, it's doubtful that they'll even make it through something like this. And there's another really trial and error based mission where you as Buck must defeat flying enemies in a lava cave while avoiding projectiles in different directions as well as lava spurts. The game frequently jumps from easy to hard, and it's difficult to understand why it isn't more consistent.
But the game does carry a lot of the charm that the movie it's based on possesses. It's always nice to see the characters from the film, and they interact with each other through in-game cut-scenes as well as flicks ripped directly from the movie. The in game graphics are anything but cutting edge, but the character models and movement are both nice and slick, while the environments look even better, bright and colorful and carry lots of little special effects. The voice actors also do a good job, giving the humor that the series has always been known for, like hearing Sid cry "Leave me alone! I'm allergic to being eaten." It's a shame that if you die, you'll likely hear the voice clip at that part again, and the humor will wear thin before too long, but overall the audio is strong all around.
There are only fifteen missions in the entire game, from lingering adventures with Buck to the all too brief meeting of the other characters, so once you earn all your trophies, the game will lose its appeal fast. And you'll see the ending credits within one sitting, at around four hours. The multiplayer mini games don't add much value, very basic top-down shooting matches with two clones of Sid, and they don't warrant much more than a passing glance. While Ice Age Dawn of the Dinosaurs is one of the better movie-based entires, it's overwhelmingly lacking in content and could only suffice as a rental, because even young children could probably find something deeper and more fulfilling than playing as their favorite Ice Age characters.