GENRE
	Action-Adventure
	DEVELOPER
	Vicarious Visions
	PUBLISHER
	Activision
	NUMBER OF PLAYERS
	1
	CONNECTIVITY
	No
	BUY NOW AT

With the wildly successful DS fast approaching the age of three, the stream of titles for GBA (with a couple of notable exceptions) is down to little more than a trickle of mediocre budget games, opportunistic children's fare and licensed movie tie-ins. Shrek the Third is, of course, a movie tie-in, and while this action-adventure title might keep young Shrek fans diverted for a few hours, it will probably be a forgettable experience for them, much less for older gamers.

visuals

The graphics look really polished, as would be reasonably expected for a game this far into the GBA’s life cycle. Character sprites are large, and they look, move and posture much like their onscreen counterparts. The rest of the game, likewise, looks good, but it is sorely limited in variety. Enemy characters are nicely detailed, but they only come in one of about half a dozen flavors with surprisingly little variation across the game’s levels. The levels themselves also look nice, but they only come in a few varieties of unremarkable forests, desolate mountains or desolate caves that look exactly like the desolate mountains. One notable exception is the last act of the game, which has some fantastic cityscapes of Far, Far Away, but by that time the game is all but over.

audio

Whatever the quality of the films may be, the movie soundtracks have remained an endearing combination of beautiful orchestral arrangements and catchy pop tunes. Whatever wound up in this cart is neither. For the most part, the game’s score fails to create either the epic feel of an orchestral arrangement (something that has been done successfully on a GBA cart) or the hum-along vibe of pop music; instead it lands as generic, forgettable music that frequently destroys the game’s mood. Worse still, the game’s music is -- like so many other things in this game -- repetitive, with many of the same tracks returning to haunt the player again and again. The most egregious trespass is the presence of the game’s title track in several of the game’s levels, a general no-no unless the track is really good, which it is not. On the other hand, there are a couple of boss tracks that are much better, but they are too infrequent to save the day.

gameplay

The game is broadly based on the movie of the same name, which was no doubt challenging for the developers since the movie was not very good. The movie’s mediocrity, combined with the fact that there just wasn’t much content in the film easily adapted to an action game, left Vicarious Visions with little to work with, and the end product is that the game proves atrociously repetitive. The game storyline, which is based only on a small slice of the film, begins with Shrek and (future King) Arthur being shipwrecked en route back to Far, Far Away, and the bulk of game follows their quest to get home.

Unfortunately, The Odyssey this is not. The game is divided up into four acts, with each act featuring between 4-6 levels. That sounds more impressive than it actually is; the levels are pretty short and a seasoned gamer could best the whole lot of them in just a few hours. Unfortunately, there is no real replay value to the game, either. In each act, the player advances from stage to stage, controlling some combination of characters as they walk, jump onto platforms, throw switches and solve mundane puzzles. There is some occasional combat, although enemies are disconcertingly few and far between. There are also a few boss battles, usually involving defeating several waves of identical enemies.

There are four playable characters in the game: Shrek, Puss in Boots, Donkey and Arthur. To their credit, the four characters play differently from each other; Shrek is a tank-style character with a nasty punch and high hit points, Puss is a swordsman who can scale walls, Donkey can break rocks and move certain objects with his powerful kicks, and Arthur can defend with his shield or throw it horizontally or vertically. The controls are pretty good, and for the most part will give the player little trouble in getting the characters to do what he or she wants.

Each level allows you to control between one to three of the characters, swapping from character to character using the L-trigger. Levels where you play as a solo character are usually pretty straightforward platforming affairs, while levels using multiple characters almost always entail puzzles that require use of each of the characters at some point. Level design, unfortunately, is pretty repetitive throughout the game, and at about the halfway point a dreaded sense of "been there, done that" begins to set in. Level objectives are usually just getting all playable characters from one end to the other while collecting set number of fairies or other silly objects in order to advance the plot. None of this is terribly difficult and with minimal effort the player should be able to gather enough objects to move on. There are also special items that can be collected to purchase character upgrades; these upgrades can ease travel through some of the game’s hazards, but are probably not worth the time and effort it takes to track them down.

multiplayer

N/A

overall

If you’re reading this, you’re probably not one of the gamer types who would normally give this game a second thought, much less a first one. But just to put any sliver of doubt to rest, here it is loud and clear: Shrek the Third is, at best, a short term fix for a young gamer. It’s not the worst game ever made; in fact, it does some things passably well. The platforming is polished, if simple, and the graphics are above par. Just as the game isn’t awful, however, neither is it good, and it certainly doesn’t have much staying power, even for young ones. Either from the game’s brevity or its repetitiveness, Shrek the Third will not stay in a child’s GBA very long, much to the chagrin of the badgered parent or well-intentioned relative who probably paid too much for it.

5.0/10