Up Game Review–Tired and Repetitive Platform Gamer
So Pixar’s releasing its newest movie in a matter of days—you know it better as Up. It’s a foregone conclusion that, at this point, the only thing that could possibly stop it from having an eight-figure opening weekend is a nationwide power outage. Thus it’s probably an equally foregone conclusion that it’s going to get merchandised out the yin-yang, and I mean that in the literal AND figurative senses. Of course, this includes a video game, now available for Wii, Xbox 360, Playstations 2 and 3, PC, DS, PSP and of course Mac, and I only hope that the movie isn’t nearly as predictable or as repetitive as the game is.
The game’s plot is, at least in passing, somewhat similar to the movie. I say somewhat because it’s been rather compressed. You’ll actually start out flying a plane as Dug the dog, and from there you’ll segue into a series of platformer action sequences where you jump and run and do a few character-specific moves to get from one place to another, while being pursued by a millionaire industrialist who’s spent years in seclusion and emerged only because you kidnapped his “trophy bird”.
I spent an ungodly amount of time as an old man, running through a jungle being trailed by a chubby boy scout-analogue. And under normal circumstances, I love Pixar movies…but seriously, I truly, truly hope that the movie is a whole lot better than this second-rate wreck that they tossed onto my every system. Gameplay is almost insultingly limited, with sequences like “Run Through the Jungle”, “Get Jumped By Attack Dogs Every Three Minutes”, “Slide Down A Waterfall”, and my personal favorite, “Repeat”. You think I’m being funny there, but truly, I’m just being the best kind of accurate that I know how. Anyone who tries to play this misery detail of a game will be subject to a whole lot of more of the same. I spent like five consecutively levels just running through a jungle, whacking things with a cane, and occasionally, with a backpack. The only thing worse than that was that I had to regularly switch from one character to another so that I could do some ridiculous character-specific activity so that I could actually advance. This was probably intended to provide variety, but what it really provided was a series of massive speed bumps that slowed down the pace of the game to something resembling…well…an elderly gent trying to run the Boston Marathon.
There’s not much sense in commenting on the graphics and sound and such, because this game is so spectacularly broken on the story level as to make the package it’s in, no matter how pretty, utterly moot.
Pixar desperately needs to stay out of the game business, if this is the kind of material they’re turning out. Oh, sure, they probably had next to nothing to do with it but collect the paychcecks but there’s no two ways about it—Up is easily one of the most awful games I’ve ever played, and considering the sheer amount of foul, buggy crapware I’ve burrowed through in my day that’s saying a LOT. There are vastly better titles out there than this dreck—I’ve talked about several. Go enjoy one of those instead.