On Screen / Aimee Green

Video game review: Stick with the movies for these tie-ins

By Aimee Green | Friday, August 29, 2008 | () comments

Every summer, a rash of movie-related video games gets thrown on the market. Most times, these games are rushed in an attempt to cash in while the movie’s still on the big screen. As a result, most of them are bad.

Every summer, I hope that maybe one, just one, of these movie tie-ins will be good.

This is not that summer.

Of the four movie-related games I played, only one was even halfway decent. Another was kind of fun, but definitely not worth buying.

As a general warning, never buy a movie-tie-in game. If you feel the need to try it, rent or borrow it first.

n “The Incredible Hulk” (Sega; Rated Teen; $59.99 on Xbox 360; also for PlayStation 3, Wii, PlayStation 2, DS, PC). Score: 7/10

“Hulk” is the only one of the four that actually felt more like a real game. It has an open world, and you can choose whether to play story missions, side missions or minigames. Or you can simply jump around the city destroying things — although you can’t do that without some retaliation.

That part isn’t bad. Unfortunately, the storytelling is pathetic, told most of the time with still frames and voice clips. And speaking of voice clips, Edward Norton lends his voice, but he sounds like he’d rather be somewhere else. Hearing someone read straight off a script with zero emotion just doesn’t get me excited to play.

The gameplay is problematic at times. Hulk can perform all manner of Hulk-like attacks, including smashing things and tossing vehicles. But sometimes it’s hard to grab onto or attack the thing you’re wanting. And sometimes he gets locked into an animation and is pummeled by the enemy in the process.

The graphics aren’t so hot, either, with a terrible draw distance. Anything more than a block or so away becomes hazy and purple, even when you’re on top of a building. New York looks like it’s permanently covered in fog.

“Hulk” isn’t bad; I’ve just seen other games do the same thing better. You could do much worse for movie-based games this summer.

n “WALL-E” (THQ; Rated Everyone; $49.99 on Xbox 360; also for PlayStation 3, Wii, PlayStation 2, DS, PSP, PC). Score: 5/10

I wanted to like “WALL-E.” That little robot is so cute. And, at first glance, the game does a good job of capturing the look and feel of driving a boxy robot around.

But “WALL-E” is simplistic to a fault. Every level is linear, and there’s never any question as to what you have to do.

In fact, the game makes sure you never forget what to do by popping up annoying help boxes every time you do an action. Even if you’ve done that action a gazillion times before, the game insists on refreshing your memory. I’ve got it already!

Things pick up a little when EVE shows up; at least she can fly. But even the flying missions are simple and rather boring.

“WALL-E” might be satisfying for a really young child, but for anyone else it’s just too shallow.

n “Space Chimps” (Brash Entertainment; Rated Everyone 10+; $49.99 on Xbox 360; also for Wii, PlayStation 2, DS). Score: 6.5/10

OK, I admit it. I actually had a little bit of fun with “Space Chimps,” in a this-is-in-no-way-challenging, but-it-amuses-me way. At least it had more originality than the “WALL-E” game; its levels had a decent mix of platforming and puzzle-solving.

Cutscenes with the two main characters — Ham and Luna — proved funny. But the game assumes you’ve either already seen the movie or you haven’t seen it and don’t want to be spoiled on it, so it doesn’t devote much time to the story. Still, after a few levels, I was able to figure out the gist of what was going on.

“Space Chimps” looks pretty nice, so at least some effort was made. The problem is the game is short and incredibly straightforward. I may have had some fun playing through it, but it was easy and didn’t take long to beat. The puzzle solutions are blatantly obvious.

A monkey could beat “Space Chimps” in its sleep. Maybe consider renting it, but certainly don’t buy it.

n “Hellboy: The Science of Evil” (Konami; Rated Teen; $59.99 on Xbox 360; also for PlayStation 3, PSP). Score: 2/10

I have not hated a game this much in a long time. Absolutely everything about it is awful, from the gameplay to the graphics to the story. The only thing it has going for it is that it’s “Hellboy” and Ron Perlman did the voice.

The entire game consists of moving from one area to the next, defeating bad guys by repeatedly hitting the same button — over and over and over. You can’t move onto a new area until you’ve cleared every enemy from the current area. And that’s all there is to “Hellboy”: one fenced-in section after another.

By the end of the first chapter, I was so bored I was nearly catatonic (or I wished I was). At the least, the story should have been interesting. I know it had one, but heck if I could tell you what it was. Mostly, Hellboy just wandered around beating up on bad guys.

Avoid “The Science of Evil” like the plague. Even if you’re a Hellboy fan.

Aimee Green can be contacted at (402) 473-7326 or Aimee.Green@lee.net. The Lincoln Journal Star is a Lee Enterprises newspaper.