Shrek Superslam review

Film tie-in games are an odd genre. They are almost always rubbish in gameplay and almost always sell really well. Getting the license to create Shrek games must be a dream come true because the colourful cartoon characters will appear to children but the film appeals to adults as well creating a broad market.

Can this title fail regardless of it's content? Probably not. This would be a pretty good reason for a game developer to not try too hard with the title. Fortunately Activision and Shaba Games have managed to turn out a decent game to tie in with Dreamworks incredibly successful film series.

Story Time

Shrek Superslam is a fighting game when it comes down to it. It takes the form of anything from one-on-one matches to one-on-three or all out fights with four characters at once and every combination in between. Of course the full cast is available to fight with although you'll have to work to unlock some of them.

The crowd pleasing favourites are available from the off though including Donkey, Pinocchio and Shrek himself. The first mode you'll try out is the story mode. This is a series of fights based around mini stories that are told by the cast to Donkey's restless offspring. The tale is told in a cut scene and then a fight takes place.

The cut scenes are voiced by convincing enough sound-a-likes rather than the original actors but they do a pretty good job. The sequence of fights is quite short and it's easy to complete the whole story in about half-an-hour. Apart from this mode, however, there's the regular fight mode allowing you to choose any characters in any teams with a mixture of up to four players and CPU controlled characters.

There's also the points mode where you complete a series of challenges to unlock additional characters, costumes and fighting arenas. This is a much more substantial mode than the story mode and should keep you going for some time. The challenges here aren't just the fights but also completing tasks like reversing attacks or throwing an opponent a certain number of times.

All About the Superslams

The “Superslam” in Shrek Superslam comes from a special move that is at the core of the fighting. By executing combos and throws you can gradually build up a slam meter which allows you to unleash a special move which knocks your opponent out of the scenery in some comical fashion. Executing a slam gains you a point and loses each opponent that you hit one point. In a all out 4 way fight a slam can effectively get you four points if you are able to hit everyone else.

The scenery can be brought to bear as well in the fights with some odd objects, like large hams, appearing and the destructible scenery being usable as weaponry. Even the smallest characters can pick up the picnic tables and throw them at their opponents. Other objects will appear from time to time as powerups including guns and potions. The controls are quite nicely laid out for the controller and it's easy to find the button that you're after in the heat of battle.

Looking sharp

Of course, what's going to sell this game is its resemblance to the films. The animation and characters in Shrek Superslam look convincingly like the Dreamworks creations. They move well during battle and the cutscenes in story mode look good. The pre-rendered scenes aren't quite up to the standard of animation in the films but they're not bad. There just isn't the level of detail in the characters or the animations so you'd never mistake them for scenes from the film but they are none the less enjoyable.

There aren't that many cut scenes in the game, just in the story mode. There are introduction animations for each character before each fight but these are always the same. The fight arenas are also typically Shrek with lots of colourful backdrops and lots of items hanging around that can be broken up and used as weaponry. One challenge involves throwing gingerbread men opponents into the fire in the bakery, for instance.

It's a Party

Being able to have four players in a fairlysimple and frantic game lends itself to the party game area. The lack of support for Xbox Live means that to play it as a party game you hae to get your friends round. The resulting game can be quite fun but compared with other titles of this type, like Super Smash Bros, it tends to feel a little sluggish and the frame rate does tend to drop off slightly as you get more action on screen.

With over 20 characters and 16 arenas there's plenty of variety for you and your friends. You can also inject some computer controlled mayhem into your battles, up to a total of four characters in one battle. The free for all battles can get quite difficult to follow and to try and keep track of who's in the lead and how many more slams you need. There's also a king of the hill mode where you can gain points for each second you occupy an area of the map. These two multiplayer modes can get tedious as there's not much scope for variety.

Button Bashing

Shrek Superslam tries to tread the line between fine fighting and button bashing. This creates a game that's easy to pick up and play and that it's possible to inject some finess into. You can create combo attacks, attack reversals and wall attacks as well as a variety of throws and of course utilise the scenery. This is the line walked by it's predecessors Super Smash Bros and Powerstone and these show how to walk that line more successfully. That's not to say that Shrek doesn't do a good job but it doesn't manage to liveup to the legacy of its predecessors.

The characters don't move with the speed and finesse of those in Smash Bros and the fighting has less finesse. The recognisable characters help to make this title stand out and it's not necessarily a bad thing. If you're a big fan of Shrek then this is definitely a title worth checking out. If you're not but you like this type of game then there are better examples out there.