Wreck-It-Ralph
Publisher – Activision + Disney Interactive
Rating – E
Platform – Wii, 3DS, DS
Review Platform – 3DS
Story
The game starts off with a minute and a half-ish long cut scene, showing what happened to the gang after the film finished. Obviously I’m not going to spoil it for people who haven’t seen the film yet, so I won’t mention anything about the cut scene.
Gameplay
Okay, where do I start? Wreck-It-Ralph is a 2-D platforming game and you play as either Ralph or Felix, depending on who is needed at the time. They both have different abilities, although very limited abilities to say the least. Ralph’s character focuses on strength, and can destroy obstacles that are inconveniently placed in your direct path. He can also push heavy objects to allow you to reach higher places. Ralph is also the better character to play as for defeating enemies, as you can button mash with him fairly easily and destroy anything that walks in front of you with no sweat. Felix on the other hand can fix objects using his tools. By doing this you can then progress forward without dying. You can swap between Ralph and Felix at any point during the game with the simple press of a button, which is pretty handy.
The objective in this game is incredibly simple: get to the end of each of the 12 levels. Yes 12 levels. There are 4 main levels in each area which are themed to locations in the film. I will warn you now, completing all 12 levels took me under 2 hours. That is without collecting the collectibles though. I recommend not to, seeing as they unlock you some pretty awful prizes. Along with the simple objective of making your way to the end of the level, you will come across certain ‘challenges’ along the way. These can range from a swarm of enemies, to something Felix must fix, and maybe the odd pushing of a box somewhere. The levels are the most eye-tiring and unexciting I have played since buying a knock-off games system that plugs into my TV back in 1999. Good times. But seriously, the levels are unimaginative, dull and tremendously repetitive. You can also get coins throughout the level, which don’t do anything apart from add to your score, and I think they may give you extra lives, but I’m not too sure on that. There are various save points located in each level, that aren’t really needed, but if you’re finding this game challenging then I’m sure they’ll be helpful; especially for younger players. You can also collect score from killing enemies, smashing crates, and grabbing coins, which goes towards your overall score for the game. The score has no purpose whatsoever though, so there really is no need to be stopping to make sure you’ve grabbed all the coins and smashed every box in each level.
Graphics
I will say very quickly, that the graphics in this game are terrible. I checked up on all 3 versions of the game (I genuinely thought the game I had was a spoof/joke), but they are exactly the same. There are no lighting effects, no physics effects, nothing interesting to pull the player into the game visually. The bland and down right boring colour scheme for some of the locations is extremely tiresome on the eyes, and whilst playing it just looks messy. Most of the textures used are just awful. Again, they’re not fun. The overall look of this game to me personally is just ugly. What was one of the worst parts of the game was the cut scenes that had been created for the game specifically. These consisted of no movement, only a sprite change, and bad audio that just didn’t sound great at all. Speaking of audio (I know that isn’t graphics), but the characters phrases that blurt out every 10 seconds or so can get very, very annoying. Even more annoying when you realise there are around 2 different sounds for each action, so you’re going to hear them all in the first minute of playing the game. I also realised very quickly that each new location, is just a re-textured version of the other locations. The game feels so cheap, and everything I can pick out of it just reinforces that claim. The fact that the levels are made in blocks too, square trees, square crates, just squares everywhere. The only game to be hugely successful with squares that I can think of right now is Minecraft.
Replayability
I feel like this game has next to no replayability at all, even if it was the last game left after not being destroyed by the evil game destroying monsters of Venus or some crap like that. You wouldn’t want this game as a desert island game, just leave it there. There’s just nothing new about the game after you complete the tutorial.
Closing Comments
I feel as though this game was planned very last minute, and was rushed out into shops because of the great feedback being given on the films release. However, this game has completely destroyed the film in my eyes. I haven’t seen it yet, and after playing this game I feel like I don’t want to. If you’re going to do a job, you may as well do your best at it. I don’t feel like anyone can enjoy this game. It’s too repetitive, the graphics are awful, the soundtrack is annoying, and all of this put together just creates a horrible experience that I feel no gamer should have to go through. It should be me sat in that therapy session with all the ‘bad-guys’ from the movie because I had to play the game. But then again, Ralph had to star in it, so I’ll let him off. We all know that movies created into games is never a good thing, apart from the odd exception every now and again, and this is no pleaser. For a very expensive but short thrill, this game may be for you. I advise anyone to watch gameplay of this first before buying it, after all, this is just my opinion.