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> Results: Futurama
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Show canceled, but not forgotten...Professor Farnsworth has sold Planet Express to Mom, unfortunately giving her a majority share of the entire Earth. Early indications are she isnﾒt going to be a laissez-faire type of leader. Our cel-shaded heroes must stop her robot armies from taking over the world by taking back their ship before itﾒs too late.  Futurama was created for fans of the show and for these folks, it's going to be a fun ride. There is no explanation of the world and why things are this way, and no help to anyone who hasnﾒt watched the show. On the other hand, when youﾒve finished the game, the cut scenes and story are a new episode all on their own. They kept the darkly funny and disturbing wit of Matt Groening, and by using the voices from the TV show they kept that essential connection to the rest of the character. There are enough zingers and one-liners to fill a rim shot factory. This one isnﾒt the typical kiddie platform hide-and-seek game. There is a lot of combat, and quite a few places where you end up dead from just the tiniest miss-step. Luckily, the Professorﾒs Reanimator (looks like a giant toaster in the first level) will bring you back a limited amount of times. The save system is really draconian, though. You re-spawn at your last completed checkpoint. Checkpoints can be quite a ways from each other, and you can only save at the end of levels. Once you get to the battle, there is good variety in the action with the three playable characters (I donﾒt count Dr. Zoidberg ﾖ I watched one of the kids play him and that was enough for me). Fry is armed and deadly, Benderﾒs Butt- Slam and Super-Spin attacks knock ﾑem out, and Leelaﾒs deadly combos just knock ﾑem dead. (Sorry ﾖ channeling my inner marketer or something.) Lots of fun, but it does get quite hairy in spots ﾖ make sure you learn to deal with the camera system effectively because your opponents love to lurk around corners.  Even with all this witty goodness thereﾒs still trouble. It is the technical side that bites us. The game is filled with technical and graphic problems. The gameplay is cookie-cutter platform fare that doesnﾒt shine on itﾒs own, and with the tarnish of the other issues it is doubly deadly. The engine is riddled with poor collision detection and clipping problems. The control system is hit and miss, with the emphasis on miss. The graphics are very simple, even for a translated cartoon. It wouldnﾒt be so bad, but you never see it in the performance; we never hit a solid 60 fps, and struggle with 30 in places. For a cel-shaded game that is just substandard in this day and age. And even the fact that this is a never-before-seen Futurama episode hardly makes up for the shortness of the game (10 hours or less for my gang, 5-6 hours for a grown-up with solid FPS skills). Kid Factor If youﾒve never watched this show, be prepared for some Simpsonﾒs-style humor, but even darker and more adult. No real blood ﾖ when things die they just make a silly noise and fall over and fade away. Lots of icky stuff, though. I mean, Fryﾒs heath power-up is Slurm, which are the secretions from a space worm sold in cans like Coke. Itﾒs the humor that is the biggest question mark in this one. Even the bad guys have smart mouths. Those incessant one-liners are straight out of the TV show, and they can be quite adult. For example, in the first sequence the Professor admits that he pawned the spare dark matter engine. When asked why, he says something along the lines of, ﾓThe same reason anyone in America pawns something ﾖ to get a gun!ﾔ My eyebrows went up on that one, and there were quite a few other places. In between each level there is a ﾓcommercialﾔ from the show. These range from the darkly funny to the frankly sexual (the ﾓTri-curious?ﾔ one in between the first and second levels started a loooonnnnggg conversation at my house). If you let your children watch the TV show, they wonﾒt hear anything out of their experience. If the show is on the no-no list, Iﾒd be careful with this one. There are no real safe spots ﾖ it is all through the game. Personally, Iﾒd stick with the rating on this one, if only to help avoid having to hear all that cleverness being parroted back to you over and over and over (or being demonstrated for your Mother). I finally had to start charging for imitations (at $6 a piece) to get mine to stop. As always, I suggest you play the game through before letting them get their hands on it. Reviewer Recommended Ages: 13+ ESRB: T for Teen ﾖ Comic Mischief, Suggestive Themes, and Violence Publisher: Vivendi Universal and Fox Interactive Developer: Unique Development Studios Format For Printing | Tell A Friend | Digg | Slashdot | del.icio.us Home > Review Archive > Video Games > Results: Futurama |
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