Post by Shiguru Wazzat on Aug 1, 2003 15:37:17 GMT -5
This is a review CSC wrote about Futurama for the X-Box. He asked me to post it to warn some Townies, 'cause he beat it in 6 hours. So, here's his review in all it's glory 
:
01/08/2003
Futurama
Author: SCI / Fox Interactive
Made in 2003
Time took for me to complete: 6hrs 31mins
Fox seem to be making a fair few irrational decisions these days: Family Guy, as excellent as it was, was criminally cancelled after only three seasons of episodes, and Futurama cancelled after 4 or 5 (hit me if I’m wrong), whilst they allow the now uninspired Simpsons to live on in its umpteenth season. Ah well, all the people who loved the adventures of Fry, Bender, Leela, Dr. Zoidberg and Professor Farnworth can relive them in this adventure, right? We’ll see…
Plot: 4/5
The plot to the game is written by the scriptwriters of the series, and this shows: every line that attempts to humour never misses the mark, and the script even includes reasons for the age-old “how the heck does my character regenerate?” type questions. As a result of it being written by a television writer, the game does follow a rather linear structure, but it is extremely well written. Within the boundaries of the story, not a single area is left explored, and everything links up perfectly. It’s not set to change the world of story-telling, but it’s a bloody good attempt nevertheless.
Take Dr. Zoidberg out for a ride in this fun but short-lived minigame.
Graphics: 5/5
A problem you seem to find with many licensed games is that, once you get past the license, there isn’t really much of a game: characters don’t relate back to what the game’s based on, cheap voice impressionists are brought in to voice the characters themselves, the graphics look cheap, the music is poor, etc. I can safely say that with Futurama, this isn’t the case.
Graphics-wise, there wasn’t anything that I could look at and say: “That doesn’t look right, that doesn’t fit in”. Which, considering the launch from 2D to 3D, is pretty respectable. The cell-shaded graphics style fits in perfect with the TV series, and each character, object, etc from the TV series is 3D-ed beautifully, and there’s a real sense of you genuinely believing that you’re in the Futurama world. Each world is bright and colourful, each object looks great, the animation runs extremely smoothly, and nothing looks out of place.
The FMV footage within the game is also outstanding, with even the lip synch on the characters being word perfect.
Pretty faultless, I thought.
The black pipes move up and down, allowing you to reach those final collectables (providing you don’t fall off, of course..)..
Music / Sound: 4/5
We have our Futurama main theme in the background (which I love), but apart from that, the music isn’t particularly memorable, and just provides something in the background to accompany your game playing.
You didn’t want to buy this game for the music, though, did you? The voice acting in a game like this is where the genuine feel to the game can either stand up tall, or fall flat on its face. To ensure that Futurama didn’t suffer this problem, the real voice actors were pulled in to voice the characters in the game. As such, each is acted out wonderfully, and again, there isn’t really much to fault.
Originality: 2/5
Futurama is described as being an “action platformer”. Which I’d say is an apt description. The main game consists of you taking the role of one of your lovable Planet Express crew in levels that have lots of death-defying jumps, quirky little puzzles, mega death robots and whatnot, and lots of collectables. Which is what you’d expect from an action platformer. There are many little diversions from the main game (including an irritatingly entertaining Crash Bandicoot-esque stint with Dr. Zoidberg), but there’s nothing here that you won’t have seen before: collect enough money to get an extra life, collect all the collectables to access to previously accessed movie footage, music and images. It does what it wants perfectly, but it’s not a revolution in game-making.
Collect all the Nibblonians in a level and be rewarded with pictures, music and movies from the level (although I’m not sure if there’s anything else yet)..
And finally, the most important one...
Fun/Playability: 2/5
I enjoyed every second of this game: although it was incredibly simple, it was an extremely fun, action platformer. Having got it before its intial release (today in the UK, I’ve seen August 18th for the US), I may have had a bit of a a headstart on the game. However, it wasn’t that much of a headstart: people who paid out £40 on this today at 9am could have perhaps beaten the game by 5pm, and would therefore feel a tad cheated. The game is criminally short, with my game time being just over 6 and half hours (‘Game Over’s and the like added on, it would perhaps be closer to 7, but I was stated in game as having spent that amount of time on it). Although I didn’t get all the collectables, there doesn’t seem much of an incentive to go back round and play through the game again (although I haven’t been able to find any strategy guides or similar yet to see if there are any bonus levels and whatnot), and it seems that once you’ve completed it, you probably wouldn’t want to go through it again anyway, seemingly being the exact same game as you’ve just played. Having picked it for £30 at an exchange shop, I don’t think I’ll feel as short changed as some people, knowing that I could probably get at least £20 of that back on some other PS2 game that I want, but I’d think there are people who would be disappointed at the game’s length. It took a lot of the fun out of it, hence the lower mark.
The loading screens should be fairly familiar to fans of the TV series.
Right, now for result time...
P: 4 G: 5 M: 4 O: 2 F: 2
Total: 17/25
Which comes to:
68%
Conclusion:
Everything about this game reeks of a real attention to detail, and everything sticks to its roots. On the outside, everything is perfect: it isn’t original at all, but it is extremely entertaining. However, on the inside the game is a tad hollow, due to its extremely short running time. I would recommend anyone who’s a fan of the series to pick it up and play, but I would not recommend shelling out hard cash for it. A rental, or a pick up of one of the probable (it’s reasonable to assume) second-hand copies in future weeks at a cheaper price. What’s in here is really good; it’s just that unfortunately, there isn’t enough in here to justify the price tag. Futurama is a game that’s entertaining for 7 or so hours, but afterwards bitterly disappointing.
CSC reviewed Futurama playing on its Xbox version.
:01/08/2003
Futurama
Author: SCI / Fox Interactive
Made in 2003
Time took for me to complete: 6hrs 31mins
Fox seem to be making a fair few irrational decisions these days: Family Guy, as excellent as it was, was criminally cancelled after only three seasons of episodes, and Futurama cancelled after 4 or 5 (hit me if I’m wrong), whilst they allow the now uninspired Simpsons to live on in its umpteenth season. Ah well, all the people who loved the adventures of Fry, Bender, Leela, Dr. Zoidberg and Professor Farnworth can relive them in this adventure, right? We’ll see…
Plot: 4/5
The plot to the game is written by the scriptwriters of the series, and this shows: every line that attempts to humour never misses the mark, and the script even includes reasons for the age-old “how the heck does my character regenerate?” type questions. As a result of it being written by a television writer, the game does follow a rather linear structure, but it is extremely well written. Within the boundaries of the story, not a single area is left explored, and everything links up perfectly. It’s not set to change the world of story-telling, but it’s a bloody good attempt nevertheless.
Take Dr. Zoidberg out for a ride in this fun but short-lived minigame.
Graphics: 5/5
A problem you seem to find with many licensed games is that, once you get past the license, there isn’t really much of a game: characters don’t relate back to what the game’s based on, cheap voice impressionists are brought in to voice the characters themselves, the graphics look cheap, the music is poor, etc. I can safely say that with Futurama, this isn’t the case.
Graphics-wise, there wasn’t anything that I could look at and say: “That doesn’t look right, that doesn’t fit in”. Which, considering the launch from 2D to 3D, is pretty respectable. The cell-shaded graphics style fits in perfect with the TV series, and each character, object, etc from the TV series is 3D-ed beautifully, and there’s a real sense of you genuinely believing that you’re in the Futurama world. Each world is bright and colourful, each object looks great, the animation runs extremely smoothly, and nothing looks out of place.
The FMV footage within the game is also outstanding, with even the lip synch on the characters being word perfect.
Pretty faultless, I thought.
The black pipes move up and down, allowing you to reach those final collectables (providing you don’t fall off, of course..)..
Music / Sound: 4/5
We have our Futurama main theme in the background (which I love), but apart from that, the music isn’t particularly memorable, and just provides something in the background to accompany your game playing.
You didn’t want to buy this game for the music, though, did you? The voice acting in a game like this is where the genuine feel to the game can either stand up tall, or fall flat on its face. To ensure that Futurama didn’t suffer this problem, the real voice actors were pulled in to voice the characters in the game. As such, each is acted out wonderfully, and again, there isn’t really much to fault.
Originality: 2/5
Futurama is described as being an “action platformer”. Which I’d say is an apt description. The main game consists of you taking the role of one of your lovable Planet Express crew in levels that have lots of death-defying jumps, quirky little puzzles, mega death robots and whatnot, and lots of collectables. Which is what you’d expect from an action platformer. There are many little diversions from the main game (including an irritatingly entertaining Crash Bandicoot-esque stint with Dr. Zoidberg), but there’s nothing here that you won’t have seen before: collect enough money to get an extra life, collect all the collectables to access to previously accessed movie footage, music and images. It does what it wants perfectly, but it’s not a revolution in game-making.
Collect all the Nibblonians in a level and be rewarded with pictures, music and movies from the level (although I’m not sure if there’s anything else yet)..
And finally, the most important one...
Fun/Playability: 2/5
I enjoyed every second of this game: although it was incredibly simple, it was an extremely fun, action platformer. Having got it before its intial release (today in the UK, I’ve seen August 18th for the US), I may have had a bit of a a headstart on the game. However, it wasn’t that much of a headstart: people who paid out £40 on this today at 9am could have perhaps beaten the game by 5pm, and would therefore feel a tad cheated. The game is criminally short, with my game time being just over 6 and half hours (‘Game Over’s and the like added on, it would perhaps be closer to 7, but I was stated in game as having spent that amount of time on it). Although I didn’t get all the collectables, there doesn’t seem much of an incentive to go back round and play through the game again (although I haven’t been able to find any strategy guides or similar yet to see if there are any bonus levels and whatnot), and it seems that once you’ve completed it, you probably wouldn’t want to go through it again anyway, seemingly being the exact same game as you’ve just played. Having picked it for £30 at an exchange shop, I don’t think I’ll feel as short changed as some people, knowing that I could probably get at least £20 of that back on some other PS2 game that I want, but I’d think there are people who would be disappointed at the game’s length. It took a lot of the fun out of it, hence the lower mark.
The loading screens should be fairly familiar to fans of the TV series.
Right, now for result time...
P: 4 G: 5 M: 4 O: 2 F: 2
Total: 17/25
Which comes to:
68%
Conclusion:
Everything about this game reeks of a real attention to detail, and everything sticks to its roots. On the outside, everything is perfect: it isn’t original at all, but it is extremely entertaining. However, on the inside the game is a tad hollow, due to its extremely short running time. I would recommend anyone who’s a fan of the series to pick it up and play, but I would not recommend shelling out hard cash for it. A rental, or a pick up of one of the probable (it’s reasonable to assume) second-hand copies in future weeks at a cheaper price. What’s in here is really good; it’s just that unfortunately, there isn’t enough in here to justify the price tag. Futurama is a game that’s entertaining for 7 or so hours, but afterwards bitterly disappointing.
CSC reviewed Futurama playing on its Xbox version.
.
