Full Review: Sweet zombie Jesus!
Let's get one thing out in the open, Futurama was treated like crap by the Fox Network. It was shifted around to various timeslots, eventually dropped into the post football time of Sunday at 7 PM. The show never really had a chance to gain ground as it was constantly pre-empted (in my area) by the sorry Dallas Cowboys. The fact that I live in New York and the local Fox affiliate was showing the Cowboys is a rant for another time. My current rant is the fact that for all it's brilliance, Futurama was unjustly given the axe last summer. And strangely fitting, this new Futurama game was released the week after the final show aired.
What Futurama the Game does is spin a hilarious tale that would have fit right in with the best episodes of the series. But then, why shouldn't it? The game was written by the Futurama staff writers and production was overseen by Matt Groening himself. They've crafted a tale where the evil Mom has purchased Planet Express, giving her 51% ownership of the Earth and the ability to take it over completely. Of course our intrepid Planet Express crew is not going to take that lying down, so they hop in their big, green spaceship and fly away. But first Fry has to buy back the engine from a pawn shop surrounded by killbots...
The game is split into four sections, one for each of the four playable characters: Fry, Bender, Leela, and Dr. Zoidberg. Each character also has separate abilities to match their different personalities and skills on the show. Fry has a variety of ray guns, Bender has his robot strength, and Leela kicks ass with the best of them. Dr. Zoidberg's section is much smaller and all he can do is ride some freaky alien like Crash Bandicoot used to do (there's even a running from a boulder level too).
So with all this fantastic setup it's almost a shame that Futurama the Game never rises above the level of "not bad." The look and feel of the game is just about perfect. The cel shaded graphics give the game the exact same look as the show and allow for some really detailed looking backgrounds. In fact, I'm convinced that the first person look mode was included just so players can get an up close look at the signs that are hanging everywhere. And everyone knows how much Matt Groening likes his signs. The graphics of the game never disappoint and the design allows a ton of in jokes to be scattered everywhere. There are even working suicide booths on the streets of New New York! The entire voice cast is also on hand to provide authentic voices to the authentic script. And they give it all the gusto they would give a regular episode of the series.
This attention to detail for the look and feel is brought to it's best use with the inclusion of over thirty minutes of Full Motion Video cinematics that propel the story forward. When all of the pieces of the FMV tie together it literally becomes a "lost episode." The great part is that the game allows you to unlock each of these movies to watch any time by collecting Nibblers. And don't think the cinematics miss a step when it comes to the great Futurama brand of humor. These movies are sharp and very funny.
For all of this attention to detail in the bonus content I'm somewhat amazed that the game breaks down into such a plain vanilla platformer. Shooting everything in sight in the beginning of the game with Fry is great fun. But the game loses steam once it shifts to the Bender and Leela sections. The Bender and Leela sections take away a lot of the manic energy that the Fry section had and replaces it with your standard beat 'em up. There's also a frustrating reliance on jumping puzzles in those sections as well. And the game includes what should be the kiss of death in an action game: occasional slowdown and a wonky camera. After all these years you'd think creating a camera that can pick up a good angle in a 3D game should be second nature. And for a game so focused on unlocking bonus content, the developers make it as hard as they can to replay levels (and to know which levels have to be replayed) to try and earn that bonus content.
For all these problems there's still a part of me that absolutely loves this game. Maybe I'm just a sucker for licensed games. One of the great questions when reviewing a licensed game is "How heavily do you weigh the license?" And in this case, Futurama the Game deserves a lot of extra points. The license is used to it's fullest potential here and that has to be worth something. It actually makes you forget the game's problems and just have fun. It also helps that all of these problems are of the slight nuisance variety and not the throwing the controller in anger kind. So please don't think the game is some kind of licensed black hole like The Terminator: Dawn of Fate.
