| Lets first look at the word betrayal. The root word is betray, defined as "to be false or disloyal to" and I think that it fits my feelings perfectly. Yet it is strange, I have not even played the game. Now don't get me wrong, I have been watching my wife play it. She has over 20 hours on it now, but I don't think that I would have put over 5 into it. If you don't have anything nice to say, then don't talk, right? Well there are a few things I like about this game. The sound is quite nice. Also the FMV's look great. It is nice to see the Disney name on a game that is not a straight platformer, or puzzle game. Wow, that was a short list. Honestly the positive or negative points of this game are not what is really bothering me. It is the overall lack. I am not referring to the lack of right analog stick use either - although I guess that it is all part of one and the same. The game started well, some pretty average platforming in an exterior environment. Wait, that was not the first thing to strike me. It was the choices. I was a little warmed to see that my wife was allowed to pick and choose the strengths and weaknesses of her character - honestly everyone gets the same character, I mean this one is hers, she owns the memory card. Not only that, but it felt like the questioning from your friends on the boat was customizing the world that you will be entering. The game starts off a bit more personal and friendly than most. It also has a strange dream like feel to it, where every thing is mysterious. Fighting a main boss right at the beginning of the game was a nice touch as well. But I see now that it was just a ruse to get you hooked. I have derailed into a review of the game; this is not what I wanted to do. I wanted to talk about the lack. This game is, like what I have noticed from many other games of late, empty. "You know what would have made this game like 100 times better? If they just used the same voices for the characters, or at least tried to make them sound closer to the actor/actress." That was what my wife said on the back patio one night after she had been stuck on an area. I don't know what is worse; that this game would be significantly better if voice actors were different, or the rest. The rest includes a great lack of detail. I am not talking about skin or hair detail - although that is lacking too - I am talking about overall. The world's in which you play this game seem like empty shells of the once filled and active world's that you have seen in Disney's cartoons and TV shows. Landscapes have walls around them, rooms have furniture painted on walls, and forests have trees and bushes painted onto the walls. It just feels like they decided at a meeting, "If they cant interact with it, and don't model it." These places in the worlds are so empty. I questioned my wife - resident expert -- about this and she said she had noticed these things as well. After I had pointed out what I noticed a whole string of other items she had noticed were discussed. There were a few issues about control and design mentioned. I think that it was around this time that I first saw the gummi ship. The gummi ship has to be the most disappointing creation in a "modern" game that I have seen in a long time. It could have really been a piece of the game that really added to tie the story together. The gummi flights could have held important meaning in the game. They don't. Paraphrasing my wife here in reference to the customizations that you can put into the gummi ship, "It is to difficult for me to change it so I don't." I figured that it was something simple that only seemed difficult, the modeling of a gummi ship. I spent about 15 -20 minutes fiddling with it while reading the instruction manual. I proceeded to then watch the "how to" in game demo. I was still baffled and gave the controller back to my wife. She told me that it doesn't really matter; the enemies that you kill give you enough shields that you don't need to worry. It is sad that this part of the game was made to feel unimportant and like a waste of time. You do not gain anything aside from more items to make a gummi ship with and "I wish you could just skip it, theirs no point in it, it just wastes time." I have gone back into review mode. I was more interested in pointing out how unimportant certain things were and how much of a lack of detail there was with things. After the first world - the island where you start - all the areas feel like rooms, not environments. I don't like this at all. The gummi ship takes you from one world to another. You don't know why your killing the things you do in this ship when you play the on-rail shooter section. It means nothing to you. Overall because of these things it ends up feeling like a fan product more than budgeted production. I am not qualified to review this game, this is just opinions based on viewings. I know that this game is over a year old now, but the graphics seem far too out dated for only being one year old. From reading reviews stating "stunning visuals" and the like for this game, I cannot see where that is based. Perhaps they were talking about the FMV's, I really don't know. I will end this editorial with a quote from a real reviewer. His opinions sum this up quite well. You can find the original article HERE.
-Shaper M.C. |