 Review By: Jared Black |
Developer: | High Voltage Software |
| Publisher: | Midway | |
| Genre: | Fighting | |
| ESRB: | Everyone 10+ | |
| # Of Players: | 1-4 | |
| Online Play: | No | |
| Accessories: | GameCube controller, Nunchuk, Dolby Pro Logic II | |
| Buy Now: |   |
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. There appears to have been some extra battles added to Story mode for the Wii version when playing with secondary characters, but there are no new cinematics and it’s still extremely short.
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). New items, such as movies and weapons, will also be unlocked after every mission is completed, so it’s the most rewarding mode in that sense as well.
With the controls adding little, the only other thing that could justify this game’s existence given the GameCube version is the graphical upgrade. Unfortunately, really nothing has changed since the previous version here. 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. Of course that was a GameCube game, meaning they aren’t nearly as impressive on Wii as they were a few months ago on GameCube. Worst of all, the game doesn’t run in 480p either, when every retail release these days really should.
The game is fairly average sound wise too. 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. Weird Al doing pseudo-commentary is nice though, even if he isn’t given much to work with.
Bottom Line:
There’s little to justify this port’s existence, given it’s $20 more than the original, looks exactly the same as before, and doesn’t really benefit from Wii Remote support. The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy is still a good Super Smash Bros. type brawler though, but hardly the surprise hit it was on GameCube
| Pros: | Cons: | Final Score: |
|---|---|---|
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| 7.2 |
Posted: 2007-01-17 20:29:18 PST