Reviewed: November 26, 2004
Reviewed by: Jason Porter

Publisher
THQ

Developer
Heavy Iron Studios

Released: November 1, 2004
Genre: Action
Players: 1
ESRB: Everyone

6
8
6
6
6.8

Supported Features

In this new game, The Incredibles, the very not-real bad guys hardly stop at guns. Flamethrowers, electric batons and endless grenade launchers pepper the game like salt on popcorn. Also as in the movie, its namesake family takes center stage in order to combat the threat of silly plots combined with real weapons. All four Incredibles are featured as playable characters, and the characterizations, production quality and zaniness that have made the movie a success are also here in spades. However, that hardly means it’s perfect.

As a platformer, one of the most important things this game needed to get right was the control scheme. Controls vary from character to character, as far as specific commands are concerned, but the physics of the system are the same between all of them. I have to say that, although the system is easy enough to learn, it feels loose and poorly balanced.

For starters, there are many instances, particularly when playing as Ms. (later Mrs.) Incredible, in which a simple way to scroll through available targets would have helped the game a great deal. In The Wind Waker, one of the best GameCube titles in the platform’s history, the Z button could be pushed to “lock on” to an enemy. Pushing it repeatedly allowed players to cycle through each possible target until the best choice was found. Many other games also utilize some form of targeting, as well. It’s not a huge innovative step - it’s par for the course when many possible targets are presented in a game. However, The Incredibles simply auto-targets whichever enemy or object it thinks is the best, giving players little control over who or what will be the target of their next onslaught.

It’s not that the system is badly implemented. Most of the time I had no trouble doing what I needed to do as far as acquiring an appropriate target and performing the necessary actions. I just think it isn’t too much to ask that players be given the option of doing it themselves. It would also have helped the sequences with Mr. Incredible quite a bit.

These sequences are the game’s most standard. They involve lots of severe beatings and exploding objects, and Mr. I can hit, throw, drop-smash and ram just about anything that moves. He often has to fight off scads of enemy combatants. During these instances, button mashing reigns as the only really viable way to win. His fist barely has to brush the edge of a thug’s shirt and the baddie will go flying, which makes up for the lack of being able to target specific enemies in combat. However, in even the most forgiving of games there are times when smashing the attack button and running around just won’t cut it. Again, a targeting button would have made it all better.

Other than that, the main problem with The Incredibles is that it seems to have very uneven gameplay. In one early sequence I played through a few times, the same wave of bad guys alternately gave me lots of trouble or none at all. Nothing about my play style changed from instance to instance, and yet the outcome of the fight varied wildly each time. The general difficulty level also flip-flops every few scenes, going from ridiculously easy to astoundingly difficult at the drop of a hat. A good difficulty curve is one of the marks of a great game. The Incredibles apparently forgoes the idea of a “curve” entirely.

Now that the bad is out of the way, let me say that the overall experience of gameplay is very good. The loose controls are nonetheless simple to execute and feel natural during the high-octane action sequences. This often frenetic pacing is another fun part of the game: As superheroes, after all, the Incredibles can handle quite a lot all at once, and the forgiving number of health and super attack enhancements littering the courses help to convey the feeling of playing a group of far-beyond-average people.

The whimsical attitude of the movie is evident in the little details of the game, as well, and separate it from the pack. Although the raw technical elements of play leave the taste of mediocre in my mouth, the attention to detail in such aspects as word choice, boss design and often entertaining enemy A.I. (one baddie might turn to face you, while another is so caught up in waving a flamethrower around that he completely ignores your presence) certainly keep The Incredibles from being an average game. Besides, at its base, it can be very fun to play. That’s the most important thing, after all. I just wish it were more consistently fun, and less “all over the map” in this department.

Aside from that negative point, this game has very good graphics. Measured in raw quality, they don’t come close to recent premier releases like Metroid Prime 2: Echoes, but I get the feeling that that’s less a technical problem than a design choice - the Incredibles themselves aren’t supposed to look realistic or even very detailed. They’re generic comic book heroes in 3-D. By that yardstick, the game does a very nice job with character models. All of them have effortless-looking facial expressions (still a rarity outside of cel-shaded and sprite-based games) and proportions that match up perfectly with their movie doppelgangers’.

It took me by surprise that the coolest aspect of this game’s graphics is arguably the character animations. This is not something I usually bother writing more than a sentence about, but it really takes center stage in The Incredibles. Enemies flop and flail all over the place when hit in a goofy, exaggerated display of rag-doll physics that is endlessly funny. The Incredibles themselves move in a similarly exaggerated fashion, spinning, slapping and punching with reckless, deformed abandon. The way the characters move is definitely this game’s graphical high point.

Other than that, graphics are pretty standard in The Incredibles. Jaggies (jagged lines during gameplay, resulting from inadequate smoothing) exist, but aren’t rampant. Draw-in is hard to spot, though not totally eradicated. Special effects work well, but aren’t as flashy as they could have been, given the subject material. The few cinematics dragged from the movie into the game don’t really add anything to it and don’t appear with enough consistency to augment the experience overall.

To be honest, nothing else really stood out to me. I’m sure the music was fine, but I just can’t remember a single note of it. It’s straight from the film, generic spy music and all, but it’s just not memorable. And sound effects fall into the “blah” department. They pretty much all sound like stock clips to my ears. None of them add any particular depth or interest to the game as a whole.

But don’t take my word for it. I definitely recommend a rental if you enjoyed the movie, and I’ve seen dozens of movie-based video games that fall far short of the solid experience that this one offers. In other words, for what it is, it’s a decent value. Just don’t expect a game to be picked up and played any time, or a riveting adventure that will keep you coming back over and over again for its own sake.

It may be obvious by now that, personally, I did not like this game. Call it “major release syndrome”: I’ve been playing Guilty Gear Isuka, Metroid Prime 2 and GTA: San Andreas lately. By comparison, this game is just a blip on my gaming radar, one that distracts from the more enjoyable distractions of some of the season’s really great games.

Which brings me to my final recommendation: There are many, many games that come out during fall and winter every year. It’s foolish of game publishers to put out all of their best product at once, but that’s how it works nonetheless. In light of the cavalcade of new games becoming available to consumers all at once, The Incredibles looks less appealing than it might have been if it were released in, say, February, when many of the year’s worst games are dropped into the post-holiday market. It’s not bad, but it can’t compete with the platinum-class titles it was released against.

Then again, its main buyers will be people enamored enough by the film to want to play it. For those people, I give this game a guarded recommendation. Just remember, if your copy of The Incredibles is gathering dust on a shelf in three months’ time, don’t say I didn’t warn you.