Who didn’t love the original computer generated movie Shrek? It was not only a great fantasy flick for the kids, but many adults liked it for the smart comedy as well. Shrek was so funny and so popular that the only real bad thing you could probably say about the franchise is the games. The Xbox already has a couple of duds bearing the Shrek name, and the ones on the other systems aren’t winning any awards either. That isn’t stopping Activision from trying again though (hey, sometimes people will buy anything if it has a popular license) and before the movie was even released we have Shrek 2 the video game. Can the mixture of the team game play and fun story line make for a good adventure? You never know, maybe this game will finally break Shrek’s long losing streak.

If you don’t know the story then here’s the deal: Shrek has just married his now fellow ogre Fiona and the two were really starting to live happily ever after in Fairy-tale land. The problem with their happy little union there is that Fiona was once a beautiful human princess, and her royal family isn’t too happy that she’s married a big, green, ugly ogre. The king is so upset that he’s set up a plan to get Shrek out of the picture for good. Shrek, Fiona, and his friends are now under attack from many of the kingdom’s top henchmen.

Just like in the game Sonic Heroes, Shrek 2 works on the team system. You can easily switch between characters on the fly, and each one has their own abilities needed for completing some in-game objectives. For example: Shrek can pick up crates, Donkey can do powerful mule kicks, and Fiona can slow time. As the game progresses there will be other members from the fairy-tale kingdom who join the team, which adds a bit of variety to this title.

Unfortunately, the A.I for your heroes is so bad it doesn’t take very long for your computer-controlled friends to get knocked out in the heat of an intense battle. This problem can be easily solved if you have some friends controlling the other characters, but it’s hard to convince someone to play with you when you have to work as a team. My friends would generally rather fight me in wrestling games and first person shooters -- not help me finish some boring level missions in a kid’s game.

I wouldn’t normally label a game like Shrek 2 a kid’s game because the movies usually have comedy geared for everyone, but the character’s lines are filled with only silly fart jokes and corny one-liners here. They are so bad and so cheesy that only young children will find this immature humour funny. The characters do sound like their movie counterparts, but the real Hollywood actors like Mike Myers and Eddie Murphy do not play them by the way.