 Review By: Jared Black |
Developer: | Artificial Mind and Movement |
| Publisher: | Midway | |
| Genre: | Platformer | |
| ESRB: | Everyone | |
| # Of Players: | 1-2 | |
| Online Play: | No | |
| Accessories: | N/A | |
| Buy Now: |   |
Happy Feet is one of those rare children’s games where the developer actually dumbed things down too much for children. Although the game itself is solid, it’s so simple and short that it ends up being one of the weaker values amongst children’s titles released this year.
Based on the movie of the same name, Happy Feet follows the adventures of Mumble, an Emperor Penguin without a song in a colony where each penguin’s Heartsong is everything, since it helps to attract a mate. Instead, his talent lies in his tap-dancin’ feet, which makes him an outcast in the eyes of the curmudgeon elders. Thus Mumble sets out to prove himself to the colony, and find his true calling in his harsh Arctic world.
The story mode takes place on a linear map, where Mumble moves from one point to the next in sequence. At each point Mumble must take part in one of three different story-related types of events, including dancing, belly sledding, and swimming. Dancing utilizes the Wii Remote in DDR-ish fashion, with the player flicking it up, down, left or right to correspond to the on-screen arrows that generally appear in time with the music. Belly sledding and swimming both use the Wii Remote turned on its side, with the player tilting it left and right to steer in sledding and in any of the four primary directions to steer while swimming. The 1 button can also be used to jump and perform tricks in sledding (as can quickly tilting the Remote upwards, but I preferred the button), as well as to spin in swimming.
While each of these three types is well executed, they’re also very simple and fail to change or evolve throughout the short single-player mode. Whereas a game like The Ant Bully gradually introduces children to various moves and abilities that extend the game and keep things interesting, Happy Feet gives the player all he or she needs to know in the first 10 minutes of the game and then rarely mixes things up. Even with the sledding’s strong sense of speed, in the end each level feels exactly the same. As a result, all but the youngest of gamers will probably get bored before the end of the short campaign.
There are some slight variations to each mission type, as some are simple races to the end while others involve collecting items or reaching checkpoints. Advancing to the next mission is based on the player achieving at least a bronze medal (determined by each type’s criteria), which is an easy goal on all but a few missions. Replaying missions to earn gold medals and unlock bonus content gives the game a bit of replay value, but the unlockables are pretty lame (non-interactive scenes you’ve already played through) and not worth the effort.
I guess it’s just as well though, since the game doesn’t give players a lot of time to learn any new moves or abilities. The single-player mode can be completed in several hours, and any challenge it may provide is nullified by the fact that each mission can simply be skipped if the player fails to earn a medal twice. That’s right, Happy Feet’s message is not “if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again”, but rather “if at first you don’t succeed, try again and then skip it”. The game does have a two-player Family mode, which allows gamers to sled cooperatively (player 1 guides Mumble while player 2 follows on-screen instructions to clear obstacles), dance together, and race underwater to collect the most items. Like the rest of the game these are simple, harmless fun, but with a very limited lifespan.
The game looks every bit like a straight port of a last-gen title, with PS2-ish jaggies, pop-up during the sledding and swimming sequences, and no support for progressive scan or 16:9. The penguin models look pretty good, but their animation is a little awkward. And of course the environments are repetitive, with snow, ice and water making up almost everything in the game with no interesting landmarks to break up the uniformity of the landscape. There are a few special effects, such as falling icicles and clumps of ice you can crash through, but they’re very basic in nature and not permanent (icicles fall, then disappear into the ether). So, much like the gameplay, you’ll see the same things over and over and over again.
Almost all of the voice actors from the movie failed to show up for the game, with only Elijah Wood (as Mumble) and Brittany Murphy (as his best friend/love interest) reprising their roles as major characters. However, Dan Castellaneta (AKA Homer and a million other characters on The Simpsons) does his best Robin Williams impersonation as Ramon, and the rest of the stand-ins are passable. The music used for the dancing sequences is very hit and miss though, ranging from KC & The Sunshine Band to Brittany Murphy singing as Gloria. When “Groove Is In The Heart” is one of the most memorable tracks in the game, you know you’re not dealing with an all-star lineup. The rest of the game’s sound is average and unremarkable.
Bottom Line:
As I mentioned before, there’s really nothing wrong with Happy Feet. It’s just so short, and so repetitive, that its value as a children’s title is very limited. This may be a decent pickup when it’s cheap, but not at $50. For now, there are better and cheaper ways to keep your children entertained for a few hours.
| Pros: | Cons: | Final Score: |
|---|---|---|
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| 4.5 |
Posted: 2006-12-20 18:05:47 PST