Post by Zenks Renway on Mar 22, 2009 11:33:58 GMT
One movie I loved when I was younger was Shrek. It was a great movie, IMO. Granted, the sequels suck, but I was a big fan of the first movie. Of course, what's a movie without some god-awful games released with it. Several Shrek games came out at the same time, firstly Shrek for the Xbox, which sucked. Then came Shrek Super Party, which sucked out loud, followed by 2 more games, Fairytale Freakdown and Treasure Hunt, which is probably the worst game for the PS1. Ever.
Anyway, Fairytale Freakdown is a beat-em'up for the Gameboy Colour. There's one problem I found already before I even played it:
It's a beat-em'up for the Gameboy. Exactly. 2 things beat-em'ups usually have are decent graphics and 3 or more buttons for attacking, allowing for loads of special attacks. The GBC has only 2 actual buttons minus 'select' and 'start', and it's also an 8-bit console, so it was a very bad idea to make beat-em'ups for the console. This is also why the GB port of Killer Instict sucked.
I can safely say to the developers, Eclipse, that American and English are meant to be the SAME language... Not to mention, there's no changes to the game depending on what language you choose, so there's no point in this..
What the heck are those two doing?? That is just plain wrong.
One of the few redeeming features about the game is that it has a decent password feature. Games like Metroid and Hydlide had ridiculously long passwords and had both upper-case and lower-case letters, making writing down passwords irritating (Not that Metroid is rubbish). Fairytale Freakdown has none of that BS. Only upper-case consonants. And that's great.
The music isn't bad either. Bar the menu and the last level music, there's some solid tunes throughout.
And that's where the positives in this review end.
Onto the problems again:
- Common logic in games denotes that down on the D-pad is used to duck. Not in this game though. Only certain characters can duck, and by moving away from your opponent no less. Other characters can "block", but it's not very effective.
- There are some special moves, but most of them are completely retarded, like Shrek's flaming farts, probably from eating Richie's Sprouts of doom (that was the halloween episode of Bottom, BTW), the big bad wolf's sonar waves (he's lucky he's got a nightcap on otherwise I'd check for gills), Princess Fiona's dreadful singing (Screw Ashley Tisdale, Fiona should've been in High School Musical), the Ginger-bread man's low-flying gumdrops of death (unless they're actually miniscule nail-bombs, they shouldn't hurt you, yet they're a very cheap attack, especially seeing that the GBM is very agile), and Lord Farquad's "I'm-doing-a-spot-of-Irish-folk-dancing-on-your-bonce" manouvre.
- The dragon in the movie was gigantic, as most dragons are. In the game, she's about 6 feet tall.
- The controls are slow and clumbersome. Jumping over pits in the arena is relied on pure luck, and half the time you'll fall into the pit, die and have to restart the whole fight again.
- There are no continues, which makes the previous problem less of a problem, but simoultaneously makes the gmae far too easy.
- Lack of a decent ending. If you're expecting a sequence showing people being happy, followed by a congratulatory message and scrolling credits, instead you get a single screen of your character labelled as a 'champion'. A problem that has been carried on to games like Ninjabread man for the Wii.
This is game was awful, but I will at least call it a game. The Treasure Hunt game for the PS1, though, is less than a game, more of a cowpat laid by a mentally retarded game developer into a plastic case. I'll review that game in the future, but for now, the final score:
Sound: 8/10
Gameplay:3/10
Graphics: 4/10 (Rubbish, even for the Gameboy)
Appeal: 3/10 (Typically, Street Fighter kicks this game's ass 6 ways from Sunday)
Overall- 24%
