 Review By: Jared Black |
Developer: | High Voltage Software |
| Publisher: | Midway | |
| Genre: | Action | |
| ESRB: | Everyone 10+ | |
| # Of Players: | 1-4 | |
| Online Play: | No | |
| Accessories: | Memory Card | |
| Buy Now: |   |
One of Cartoon Network’s best shows these days is The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy. With its unlikely trio of heroes and quirky sense of humor, the show has remained a bright spot for the network. The game of the same name allows players to duke it out with most of the characters from the show in a Super Smash Bros. type setting with a bit of Power Stone item using thrown in for good measure, although the somewhat basic gameplay prevents it from being a true classic like either of those offerings.
The actual battling is fairly repetitive, as each character has the same few basic attacks including a light (but faster) hit, hard hit, dash attack, and Mojo attacks. The latter are made available as players collect Mojo balls, filling up the Mojo Meter at the top of the screen. Fill it up once and a Mojo Smackdown move becomes available (and can be used against one opponent); fill it up twice, and a Mojo Meltdown move can be unleashed against all opponents on the screen. Unlike some other fighters with similar setups it actually makes sense to save up for a full Mojo Meltdown in this game, as the move automatically takes one life from each opponent (all players start out a battle with several) and also destroys all enemy NPCs onscreen at the time.
While that’s as basic as fighting games come these days, a bit of variety is offered in the form of useable items. A number of different items are found in treasure chests scattered around each level, including power ups to restore health or boost speed, various melee weapons with varying properties, ranged weapons, and finally throwable weapons. Although there is a great deal of variety in the number of weapons offered, as far as actual functionality is concerned they really only perform in one of several ways.
Fortunately, the most impressive area of the game lies in the stages themselves, and they help keep the fights interesting when the battling starts to grow stale. It’s not so much the stages themselves, but rather all of the chaos taking place within them at once. Most stages are chaotic multi-area experiences that change quite frequently, with a number of elements that alter the strategy in each fight including huge monsters, various NPCs that attack all players, and environmental hazards. For example, in one stage you’ll start out in a cemetery full of evil walking pumpkins. After you battle there for a while, you’ll move on to a city street where a giant King Kong-sized walking pumpkin chases the players while spewing bile. Finally, if you battle long enough you’ll enter a third area and finish off the fight. Although these types of transitions aren’t totally dynamic and nothing new to the genre, I was still very impressed to see this kind of attention to detail in a licensed game essentially aimed at younger gamers.
With constant chaos in each battle, the action can be a little confusing to follow, particularly when your character is thrown all the way across the screen and then warped back into the level (which happens often) or gets behind another group of players or NPCs. This isn’t helped any by the finicky camera, which switches between staying fixated on an overview of the entire area and tracking players as they battle. When the camera is pulled all the way back, it can be hard to see the action that’s occurring in the background of a level. When it tries to track players as a group, it frequently becomes confused and either leaves some players out of the picture for a brief moment, or swings wildly to focus on one while ignoring the rest.
As far as the game modes offered, Story mode is mostly worthless. Playing out like an episode of the show, Story mode is basically four or five fights with cutscenes sandwiched in-between that last almost as long as the fights themselves. Although you can unlock things and replay with new characters, and it is amusing while it lasts, it’s mostly over in about 30 minutes.
Thus the majority of your time will be spent instead in the Vs. and Mission modes. The Vs. mode lets up to four players battle it out using customized rules. In the Vs. mode, players can play each other in a number of different game types including Last One Standing (a politically correct last man standing), Coin Battle (collect coins from others), Capture & Hold (attack flags to raise them for points), Crush the Horde (he who destroys the most NPCs wins), and Break Stuff (he who destroys the most stationary targets wins). There are several more that can be unlocked, including Tick Tag Boom!, King Reaper, Skull Keeper, and Bask-Eye-Ball.
In the Mission mode, there are five tiers of fights with 9 fights in each tier. This mode is the most challenging, as the player is assigned a character and set of conditions necessary to win each mission. There’s a lot of variety in the different mission types, including the different games found in Vs. mode, and the number of characters involved changes as well (including 3 on 1 games). The incredibly long load times dampen the fun however. Generally you’ll spend over a minute staring at loading screens before and after each battle, which can be tedious when you’ve only got three or four minutes of gameplay sandwiched in-between.
Graphically, The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy is a fairly average looking cel-shaded game. Character models represent their cartoon counterparts well, but are hardly technically impressive. As I’ve already mentioned the environments look good, but again the stages themselves aren’t really the stars of the show. That would be the various NPCs and monsters that show up from time to time, with the larger ones close to the quality of those in the cel-shaded The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker.
The game is fairly average sound wise though. The music is adequate, but isn’t much of a factor thanks to all of the onscreen chaos. The game features all of the show’s voice actors, and as a result naturally sounds authentic, but most of the dialogue comes in the ultra-short Story mode. Other than that, voice acting comes primarily in the form of various one-liners, and (as in virtually every other game on the planet) those grow old quickly as there are far too few of them.
Bottom Line:
I was really surprised by how good The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy is. I expected a cheap cash grab, and instead got a fun and fairly polished little brawler that makes excellent use of its license. The attention to detail is uncommon in a game like this, and the beefy Mission and Vs. modes will keep you playing for a long time despite the repetitive gameplay.
| Pros: | Cons: | Final Score: |
|---|---|---|
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| 8.1 |
Posted: 2006-10-16 17:32:07 PST