Futurama
Bite my shiny, metal review.
Tags: Futurama Categories: PS2 Reviews, Reviews
Posted by Jeff Shedden on Nov 5th, 2003
| Title | Players | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Futurama (title page) | |||
| Developer | Publisher | Genre | Online |
| No | |||
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We try not to be political here at Dignews, but I have to say this. FOX can go bite a gigantic one for cancelling Futurama. There’s nothing we can do about it. FOX will never bring it back. However, those of us who mourn Futurama’s passing can still get one final dose in Futurama: The Game. It doesn’t quite fit the hole that the show’s passing left, but it’ll do in a pinch.
Futurama is basically just an average platformer split into four different scenarios with a different playable character for each. Fry has a gun, Bender has, well a lot of jumping and climbing, Leela brawls, and Zoidberg…. well, he’s a doctor. I’ll delve more into this in a minute.
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Futurama was scripted by writers from the show, and the plot is just as good as a lot of the shows. The game starts off with Professor Farnsworth explaining to his crew that he’s sold Planet Express to Mom, who is the owner of Mom’s Old-Fashioned Robot Factory. It turns out that the sale of the company brings Mom up to 51% ownership in Planet Earth, giving her controlling stake in the entire planet. She declares everyone her slave, and our “heroes” decide that it’s time to hightail it off the planet.
One problem.
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Somehow the Planet Express ship has been banged up and needs a new dark matter engine. It also seems that the spare engine was pawned off so Prof Farnsworth could buy a gun. Before Fry goes off to get the engine out of hock, though, Prof Farnsworth sends him on some pointless errands, resulting in Fry’s death. However, the Prof had been trying to kill Fry, merely so he could test out his reanimator. It’s basically just a giant toaster that will bring Fry back to life if he’s killed. The Prof gives Fry the gun and sends him off into the sewers to try and get downtown so he can reach the pawnshop without running into Mom’s army of hoverbots. I don’t want to spoil the rest of the story, but they do escape, only to end up stuck on an asteroid (Bender’s levels), a sun (Leela’s levels), and a swamp planet that bears many resemblances to a certain planet in that movie about the Wars among the Stars. The story caused me to laugh out loud in a few places, and is easily the best (and only) reason to play the game.
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Fry’s levels basically involve him running around through streets and sewers shooting at things and dying. The weapons he gets are few and the levels are repetitive. This is a common theme throughout most of the game. There is one exception, and that’s at the end of Fry’s stage, he pilots a giant robot chicken, and uses it to mow down dozens of killer robots.
Bender’s stages involve him running around using his fists to pummel enemies, but the meat of his levels are running and jumping (and dying). He’ll run across moving platforms, dodge boulders (Indiana Jones style), and pummel the occasional alien beastie. It’s not terribly varied, and jumping is so wonky that you’ll misjudge a good 75% of all the jumps in the game.
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Leela’s stages are all about the fighting (and dying… see a theme?). Leela punches and kicks her way through hordes of undead alien skeletons, while solving the odd puzzle here and there. There’s really no variations here, aside from trying to avoid getting blown up by the kamikaze skeletons.
Zoidberg really only has one stage, and while he can’t actually DIE in it, it’s really frustrating. You see, Zoidberg has to navigate a swamp while riding on the back of some alien horse thingie. He has to jump and dodge obstacles while trying not to fall into quicksand. If he falls, you lose time. You have three minutes to get through each section, and if the time’s up, you have to start ALL the way over. Nine minutes of your life that you’ll never get back.
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The easiest way to describe this level is, well, remember the hoverbikes level of Battletoads? Yeah. It’s that. The real sad thing is that it had potential to be a fun level, but the framerates (this is the PS2 version) dip so low in places that the controls stop responding and you miss a jump or crash into something.
Each character has a set of collectables they can grab on each level, and collecting 25 of these results in an extra life. Fry grabs cash, Bender grabs crystals, Leela grabs gold bars, and Zoidberg grabs… fish bones. Also on every level, you can rescue imprisoned Nibblonians. Collect all on a level, and you unlock the music for the level in an extra sound test. Collect all of the Nibblonians in the game and you unlock… nothing.
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This was kinda sucky, considering the other unlockables– movies and ads for things like Glagnar’s Human rinds, are all open once you see them one time. And if you miss one, you’re hosed. The only way to go back to an earlier level is to have saved on that level and not overwritten it.
The game is done in full 3D, with some light cel-shading used to make the characters look more like the cartoon. I don’t think they used enough, though, because aside from Bender, they don’t look very much like their cartoon selves. The cutscenes are also done in 3D (I guess cel animation was way too expensive), with more cel-shading. It works a little better in the cutscenes, but Professor Farnsworth’s model ended up looking VERY creepy.
Aside from the story, the sound is the best feature of the game. The music is all pure Futurama. It seriously couldn’t have been any better. There’s remixes of the main theme combined with new songs that would have been right at home in the actual show. All of the characters are voiced by their original actors, and during the levels they’ll make appropriate quips and remarks. Bender is king.
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As a whole, the game just doesn’t quite get it right. The story’s tight and the presentation is awesome. However, it has rather dull and repetitive gameplay, and many of the levels are just a chore to do in order to see the next cutscene. There’s zero replay after beating the game, and the only reason to turn it on again is so you can watch through all of the cutscenes again to gain the illusion of watching an episode. I am really hoping for another Futurama game, though. One that can combine a game that’s as good as the story. Right now, I’m going to say what you’ve no doubt heard already. You will only like this game if you already loved Futurama. If you can, your best bet is to just find a friend who’s already finished it and make him show you the cutscenes.
| What Works | Score |
|---|---|
|
+ Great, original story + Superb soundtrack and voice acting |
5.9 |
| What Doesn't | |
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- Dull, uninspired gameplay - Frustrating jumping parts - No decent extras |
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| Under the Shrink-wrap | |
| Buy it for 20 bucks at most. Try again, Vivendi, please! | |
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Tags: Futurama
Posted by Jeff Shedden on Nov 5th, 2003 and is filed under PS2 Reviews, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can post a comment, or trackback from your own site.
