|
|
|
----------------- Feel free to contribute. As always, review submissions are accepted! ------------------
------------------ Sidebar:: ----------------- "The game rating claims this is a game best suited for..."Teens"?" Somewhere down the line, this game's homage to Universal Studios attractions/movies like Jaws and Jurassic Park led the game ratings board to give this game a "Teen" rating. However, sorry...no. My 6 year old nephew watches cartoons that are more "brutal" than anything shown in this game. Hope that's good news to you; it certainly isn't good news to "teens"... "Ooh, daddy; take me on the WaterWorld ride!" What's more daring than an amusement park that makes an attraction based on the mega-million-dollar flop, Waterworld? Answer: a game that makes this one out of only 8 attractions you can visit in the whole game. Maybe I should've just posted this comment as the whole review...? |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Universal StudiosTheme Park Adventure
Click graphic, above, to order this game (Nintendo GameCube) A Techtite Review
The game is narrated by Woody Woodpecker. I suppose this is because Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Fred Flintstone, Yogi Bear, Scooby Doo, and the entire crew of Cartoon Network, would've cost that extra $$$ in licensing fees. Whatever. He greets you at the entrance, and invites you to experience the rides (in "arcade game" fashion), answer trivia questions, and find the missing letters from the "Universal Studios" sign. In short, you're about to spend a day at the park. Fair enough... Let me compliment one idea straight out; I like
the idea of a video game set in an amusement park... What best summarizes this game's play value? Well, I have a story for you. I remember, prior to playing it myself, an online review saying all they were able to do was go around and collect garbage. I thought this was a mere cynical reference to adventure-game-style inventory puzzles, only to discover, he meant this comment literally! No joke, the most major way to get points in this game (i.e.; the only way to get on any ride other than E.T.) is to collect garbage off the park floors and put them in the trash receptacles where they belong. While this is supposed to be good lessons for the little kids, let me be frank; I wouldn't want my nephews and nieces to be taught to pick up someone's messy, slimy garbage on the well-walked floor of an amusement park. There are better ways of earning a Boy Scout badge than that. At least you don't need garbage to get on the aforementioned E.T. ride.
However, aside from the 5-second close-up of E.T. near the end (shown below),
As for the park itself (outside of the rides), it's a lot like Resident Evil in that the backgrounds are decidedly 2D stills while you and the NPC "tourists" around you are 3D polygon characters. You'd think that this would allow for some impressive looking characters in the foreground --with all 3D graphic power at their disposal-- though these characters look only average. To make matters worse, these characters are often miniaturized to ant-size --this often includes you-- making navigation almost impossible in some camera angles (and as for looking for all 16 letters of the "Universal Studios" sign, forget it!). In other words, these are pretty lackluster graphics for a game released in 2001. Do I need a conclusion here? Well, if you're still reading, I guess I must. Let's just say that this is another fine example of how a game idea that could be amazing --with the right game designers backing it up-- has been made into another smear on the reputation of Universal Studios video game licensees. They should be more careful next time.
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Burnout
Near
Miss
Small
Crater
Large
Crater
Deep
Impact
Let's cut to the chase: games in which
Universal Studios participate, have a very low success rate. E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial
is still considered by many to be the biggest snafu in 
presuming the concept
is handled right.
If such a game was an adventure game,
with each ride in the park being a site to explore at your leisure, that would be pretty
cool. You could solve puzzles of some sort, and ride the attractions as
your reward; neat. Equally cool (perhaps even cooler) would be a
Super Mario type game, with vibrant, 3D level maps being based on
"The Hunted Mansion Ride," "The Pirate Ride," and so
on.
That would be even cooler. Yet each time the idea of an
amusement-park-game is attempted, the game designers attempt
something...different. In this case, I guess I mean something
"different" as in, well...something
wrong. 
the
overall attraction looks less like 3D, and more like a 2D arcade game from
the 1980's (shown here). This involves dodging obstacles on a bike ride
across a one-way street (a left-to-right "scroller," in
2001?!?). Don't worry about how your geeky alter-ego keeps falling off the
bike for no explicable reason; you could hit 80% of the road hazards and
"speed bumps," and still make it to the end. I know, because I
wasn't even trying to win the first time, and I even got #1 on the high
score list. It's nice of the game designers to make the "easy"
mode so easy for small kids, though there's no incentive to try the harder
levels; it's all more of the exact same thing.
Rides, as a rule, do have 3D
graphics...though not much more gameplay. In the Jaws ride, you must throw things at
the great white terror of the deep --like dynamite, bottles, and bombs--
until his health meter goes down. In the Back to the Future ride, you must race through
3 (boring) time periods, bumping into Biff's time machine vehicle ahead of you, until
his car breaks down (this makes more sense if you ever rode the ride). The Backdraft
Ride has the best excitement --you must save people from a
burning building-- though it's short lived. Jurassic Park has
been reduced to a mere shooting gallery (whose target sight doesn't even
work exactly right); likewise for Wild Wild
West's attraction (which, at least, has a target sight that works). I
think this is the best time to mention that every startup of the game
begins with a disclaimer, saying this is not an accurate representation of
a day at one of the theme parks. I think this is a wise comment to make.