Reviewed: December 15, 2002
Reviewed by: Mark Smith
Publisher
TDK Mediactive
Developer
Digital Illusions CE (DICE)
Released: October 30, 2002
Genre: Platform
Players: 1
ESRB: Everyone
3
3
3
2
2.8
Supported Features
I cringe every time a new movie-themed game releases. More often that not, the games rely too heavily on the popularity of the film and skimp on game design and gameplay. I can count the number of quality movie-to-game translations on one hand (Homer Simpson’s hand for that matter), and unfortunately Shrek Extra Large isn’t going to require any fingers or toes in my ongoing tabulation.
TDK recently released another Shrek title on the GBA, and while it wasn’t the shiniest penny in the GBA pocket, it managed to hold its own. One would think that a license such as Shrek would be rich with ideas for great gameplay, but DICE has squandered this golden opportunity away on a generic 3D platform title that fails to generate interested in even the youngest Shrek fans.
This particular adventure doesn’t relive the plot from the movie but rather inserts its own story, which is admittedly clever, but can’t hold the game together long enough to finish it. In this game Merlin’s henchmen have kidnapped Princess Fiona and in order to get her back Shrek must defeat the evil Ice Queen and free Merlin. What follows is ten warped levels of pure animated hell.
Anyone who plays platform games has certain expectations going in and Shrek doesn’t live up to any of them. Control is flaky at best, hampered by both a terrible camera system and an ever worse collision detection system that keeps the characters detached from their environment and other characters.
The puzzles are simplistic and will probably insult the intelligence of even the pre-teens the game is targeted for. Things never get harder than collecting tons of stuff, or escorting characters from point A to B. Combat is done with traditional punch and kick moves plus enough belching and farting to embarrass most moms. While I admit I had a bit of perverse pleasure lighting my own Jalapeno-induced farts and turning them into deadly fireballs, even that moment of glee was stomped into the ground by the game itself.
Where to start? This game is not worthy of being on the Cube. What was the Nintendo review board on when the stamped their seal of approval on this thing. The frame rate is horrible and at times the game is downright unplayable due to jerky camera swings and rotations.
Textures are flat and boring with no bump-mapping or decent lighting effects. The worlds are fairly large and rather complicated with plenty of polygons, perhaps explaining the disappointing framerate. The characters are the best part of this game, well modeled with some surprisingly attention to detail, but even these guys fall apart when they start to move in inconsistent and jerky animation.
There is an abundance of haze or fogging, which is usually used to improve the framerate. Not so here. There is nothing here that remotely taps the power of the Cube. The Dreamcast could have just as easily run this game and it would have disappointed owners of that system as well.
When the best thing you can say about a game’s audio portion is that the farts and belches sound cool you know you have problems. Oddly enough, the sound and music are probably the best part of this game, but even this is of such random and dubious quality that it can’t redeem this title.
While there are plenty of samples from the film and lots of dialogue much of it doesn’t synch properly to the game. Even more noticeable are the periods of almost total silence where you are cursed to wander the massive levels with no sound or music.
If you end up getting this game them I have failed my sworn duty as a game reviewer. You will find approximately 15-20 hours of gameplay (and I use the term loosely) inside the fairytale world of Shrek. I’m guessing because I could only bring myself to play the first half of this game before backing away from my GameCube very slowly.
I try to find at least one nice thing to say about every game I review. In this case I can say we can all be thankful that this is a GameCube exclusive so owners of PS2 and Xbox systems can relax. GameCube owners need to steer very clear of this title. Don’t even risk a rental. It’s just not worth it.