A licensed platformer delivers but still leaves more to be desired.
Recommended game: The Bards Tale
Shrek 2 isn’t awful by any means. But the entire time you’re playing the game it just feels as though something is missing. For Dreamworks most successful film of all time and highest grossing animated film until 2010’s Toy Story 3, it just feels as if the story deserved a bit higher quality. The sarcastic humor is intact and many of things that make the movie so lovable are included in the game (Puss-in-Boots, mainly). But the end product feels just a bit rushed.
The game follows the plot line of the movie pretty closely. Evil Fairy Godmother thinks Shrek is trash and Princess Fiona should be marrying Prince Charming. A simple explanation of most son in law – mother in law dynamics.
At all times you are in control of hang of four of the characters starting off with, Shrek, Donkey, Fiona and Gingerbread. From there you meet Lil’ Red, Puss-in-Boots, The Big Bad Wolf and others. Each character has their own special ability. Some are high jumpers while others (like Shrek) can lift up heavy barrels and rocks.
The voice acting is solid. At times it’s hard to even tell that it’s not the original actors. The music and levels all have their own unique feel. There is a lot of extra mini games and missions to achieve special upgrades for your party of misfits.
At times the camera angle is a bit troublesome. This can get frustrating because the hard parts of the game are not really hard at all, but because of the uncooperative camera angles you could find yourself dying and starting over and over at a part that should just be stupid easy. Sometimes between the camera and the level design it’s difficult for the wrong reasons.
All in all, it’s still probably one of the best games I’ve played based on a movie in some time. But that bar is still set insanely low. I also am dealing with some serious COVID symptoms today so maybe I’m feeling a bit more generous than usual.
Overall: 75%
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