Post by Zenks Renway on Nov 16, 2009 21:26:53 GMT
Yet another cherished media franchise has been shot to sh*t by by a game license. It's hard to believe that Rockstar was behind this piece of crap, but alas, alas. Want a good Muppets game? Play Muppets Racemania, a decent Mario Kart clone released the same year as this garbage that proves, just like Speed Freaks and CTR, that sometimes, clones can be better. Anyway...
The Muppets is a piece of crap. Right from the start you're greeted by a lack of visual style in the menus, a lack of the theme tune from the show (first Rocky, then Terminator, NOW THIS!?) and hell, lack of anything from the show for that matter. What you get instead is a nasty little platformer which undoes the logic that other games have set 20 years before.
PLOT- The franchise is just about puppets, so there's not much to work with. So Rockstar makes a cliche' plot about time travel where a sun-tanned Dr Bunsen Honeydew tests out his time machine on the Muppets, which then malfunctions and scatters them to different time periods. Kermit and Animal (rule 1 about Muppets in general- Animal can NEVER be controlled) must now rescue Rawlf, Sam, Swedish chef, Miss Piggy, Fozzy and Gonzo from their constant "Im having a stroke" animations in the stage select screen.
GAMEPLAY- 6 stages of unbeatable, monotonous confusing crap await you. You're able to play as Kermit or Animal, who play virtually indentically, yet you're forced to use certain characters for certain levels. Animal is superior, but I'll get to why soon. Anyway, controls are terrible. Everything is delayed by half a second, you take damage from the shortest of falls, all enemies have no sense of intelligence to them, they're just there to move left to right and block narrow corridors. Blast.
What's worse is that all the levels are mazes. You're forced to jump around mindlessly, constantly taking damage from unavoidable enemies and collecting keys, with no indication given to you of where to head. In essence, this game is another poor man's Metroid. Enemies can be killed from a distance with paper aeroplanes (Kermit) or drumsticks (Animal), the word "distance" used very loosely because your weapon has, to quote Urinating Tree, the strength and range of a toothpick. It also doesn't help that ammo is limited to just 20 projectiles (it takes 6, tops, to kill most enemies), meaning that you're always forced to pass through enemies and take damage and making you wish that the game wasn't designed this way.
Both characters have their own unique special ability (Kermit's high jump, or Animal's smart bomb), which is limited to around 5 uses. Kermit's is useless, but Animal's kills all enemies onscreen. However there's usually only 1 or 2 enemies onscreen at a time, so that move is out of question too.
SOUND- It's hit-or-miss techno gabble. It sounds good, but 5 minutes in, you're driven to muting your Gameboy by the dull repetitive tunes. Sound effects are all the exact same "8-bit earthquake".
GRAPHICS- This was the only part the game is decent in. While level and character designs have jack to do with the Muppets, the sprite animations are nice and fluid, but that still doesn't mask the droll beneath that dares to be called gameplay.
APPEAL- I've played this game for 8, effing, years, and I've never been able to beat it. And it's not that I suck at gaming, I've cruised through stuff like Ultimate Ghosts 'n Goblins. It's all down to terrible game design.
Plot: Terrible/10
Gameplay: 2/10
Sound: 4/10
Graphics: 6/10
Appeal: 1/10
Overall- 37%
So yeah, play Racemania for the PS1, and avoid this travesty as if it were Coffin Joe.
Or, you can waste some more time and watch the video version of this review, an oldie where I had my crappy old MP3 player mic:
The Muppets is a piece of crap. Right from the start you're greeted by a lack of visual style in the menus, a lack of the theme tune from the show (first Rocky, then Terminator, NOW THIS!?) and hell, lack of anything from the show for that matter. What you get instead is a nasty little platformer which undoes the logic that other games have set 20 years before.
PLOT- The franchise is just about puppets, so there's not much to work with. So Rockstar makes a cliche' plot about time travel where a sun-tanned Dr Bunsen Honeydew tests out his time machine on the Muppets, which then malfunctions and scatters them to different time periods. Kermit and Animal (rule 1 about Muppets in general- Animal can NEVER be controlled) must now rescue Rawlf, Sam, Swedish chef, Miss Piggy, Fozzy and Gonzo from their constant "Im having a stroke" animations in the stage select screen.
GAMEPLAY- 6 stages of unbeatable, monotonous confusing crap await you. You're able to play as Kermit or Animal, who play virtually indentically, yet you're forced to use certain characters for certain levels. Animal is superior, but I'll get to why soon. Anyway, controls are terrible. Everything is delayed by half a second, you take damage from the shortest of falls, all enemies have no sense of intelligence to them, they're just there to move left to right and block narrow corridors. Blast.
What's worse is that all the levels are mazes. You're forced to jump around mindlessly, constantly taking damage from unavoidable enemies and collecting keys, with no indication given to you of where to head. In essence, this game is another poor man's Metroid. Enemies can be killed from a distance with paper aeroplanes (Kermit) or drumsticks (Animal), the word "distance" used very loosely because your weapon has, to quote Urinating Tree, the strength and range of a toothpick. It also doesn't help that ammo is limited to just 20 projectiles (it takes 6, tops, to kill most enemies), meaning that you're always forced to pass through enemies and take damage and making you wish that the game wasn't designed this way.
Both characters have their own unique special ability (Kermit's high jump, or Animal's smart bomb), which is limited to around 5 uses. Kermit's is useless, but Animal's kills all enemies onscreen. However there's usually only 1 or 2 enemies onscreen at a time, so that move is out of question too.
SOUND- It's hit-or-miss techno gabble. It sounds good, but 5 minutes in, you're driven to muting your Gameboy by the dull repetitive tunes. Sound effects are all the exact same "8-bit earthquake".
GRAPHICS- This was the only part the game is decent in. While level and character designs have jack to do with the Muppets, the sprite animations are nice and fluid, but that still doesn't mask the droll beneath that dares to be called gameplay.
APPEAL- I've played this game for 8, effing, years, and I've never been able to beat it. And it's not that I suck at gaming, I've cruised through stuff like Ultimate Ghosts 'n Goblins. It's all down to terrible game design.
Plot: Terrible/10
Gameplay: 2/10
Sound: 4/10
Graphics: 6/10
Appeal: 1/10
Overall- 37%
So yeah, play Racemania for the PS1, and avoid this travesty as if it were Coffin Joe.
Or, you can waste some more time and watch the video version of this review, an oldie where I had my crappy old MP3 player mic:
