Shrek the Third

The Shrek movies have brought joy to millions around the world for years now with unique animation and design, paired with ingenious storylines which can be clearly seen throughout the writing. Because of Shrek the Third, along with the other games created based off of the Shrek Movie franchise, fans can experience Shrek and it’s cast of colourful characters on a whole new level, while getting to play as these characters throughout. Taking your talents from characters on both ends of the extreme, considering a Donkey and an Ogre, players must battle through each level while mastering the combat style and moves of each character within the Shrek world. With a simple to learn control/combat style, everyone can enjoy this iteration of the Shrek gaming franchise for hours upon hours.

Gameplay & Storyline

For Shrek the Third the game had already been made twice before, following the movies direction, however for those who have played the previous games they might find not much has changed in terms of new features and aspects of this game. Where Shrek the Third does have a similar feel its creators decided to focus on the playability of the game and enjoyment level of those who had loved the previous games beforehand. The game has a brawler-type feel where the storyline may be somewhat flat, the gameplay makes up for it with exciting battle scenes and animations. The story itself is quite simple, yet what makes players come back for more is the joy that comes from a simplistic game based within a fairy tale world, as seen in the movies.

Animation & Graphics

What the movies made clear is that Shrek is a fairy tale within a land of fairy tales, and the animations within this game support that. The graphics and details within the game bring the magic of DreamWorks Animation Studios to the forefront. Where the game itself can’t emulate the exact level of detail put into the movies it does however make a solid attempt which players can experience while in control of their characters fate, adding to the overall gameplay.

The animation and graphics do a great job of maintaining players attention, even if the gameplay itself is rather linear. Shrek The Third does a great job of enticing players suited for this genre of gameplay, yet may lose some looking for a more intricate adventure story such as the likes of God of War. While the game itself captures the overall sense of the Shrek Franchise, its depth is lacking in terms of creative storylines.

Pros:

• Exciting combat-gameplay with multitude of different characters whom you can play with throughout.
• Game itself does a good job of capturing the essence of this franchise and what people love about Shrek

Cons:

• Flat storyline with very little to do outside of the main missions.
• Graphics have some bugs which seemingly could have been fixed if more time had been provided to developers

With The Adveht of summer comes the third film of the franchise. With the advent of the third film comes the inevitable game tie-in. And with the advent of the game comes the unavoidable groans as we're forced to play yet another distinctly average movie-to-game tie-in.

I This time around you're subject' to a platform experience in which you play as the green-skinned Wayne Rooney lookalike himself. Later on, you'll also get to take control of Donkey, Puss In Boots and others, but with repetitive gameplay consisting of collecting coins and orbs, beating up enemies and jumping around linear levels, it really doesn't make that much difference who you're playing, There are some enjoyable minigames but invisible walls, an unfunny script and rubbish soundalikes in place of the film's all-star voiceover cast are just the beginning of the bad stuff.

Within barely 30 seconds of the game being turned on, someone bears down on your character and you're told to "Press an icon of a green hand to punch". But even in the control set-up screen, there's no mention of the icons. So you're just left to figure it out for yourself, while your character gets a pasting and you stare befuddled at the screen.

The problem with most games that tie in with current movie releases is that they're awkward, clumsy and unpolished affairs that feel like they've been tacked on just to make more cash from the film release. As demonstrated here.