As the first in our new policy, The Incredibles will be reviewed based not on how closely it resembles the movie that it is licensed from, but how it plays as a game in a sea of other, closely matched titles from the same genre. Why should a review of a game gain a couple of points because the movie was stunning’ It shouldn’t. I don’t regularly visit the cinema (DVD is good enough for me) – but after playing The Incredibles, I just might be in the queue for the popcorn.
Starting out as Mr. Incredible, you’ll feel like old-school is the name of the game, with your main man ploughing through the sections of the level, hammering his opponents into smithereens, hurling them off tall buildings with a single punch and generally kicking ass. As Mr. Incredible, the whole game feels solid and even though you get the odd glitch with the camera or the odd annoyance with level progression to hinder you in your task, you can live with the problems and just carry on regardless.
Then you reach level two, which sees you play the part of Mrs. Incredible. And it all goes frightfully wrong. Mrs. Incredible doesn’t have her husband’s power, so enemies tend to get up after a standard punch. Her “Incredi-Punch” seems to only fire when the game feels like it, and some of the annoying swinging sections are just ludicrously annoying. Mrs. Incredible has an incredibly stretchy body, and this allows her to grab enemies from far away, with the idea being to either throw them into oblivion, another enemy, or an obstacle that needs a little more damage than punches alone will provide to be cleared. In addition to this criminal-grabbing ability, she can also swing – Spider-man style – by grabbing onto overhead objects and using her momentum to guide her. This is all well and good, but actually selecting something to grab is just pure annoyance in a can. You can be facing an object, with the camera viewing it as dead-centre, but yet it won’t target. You have to manipulate Mrs. Incredible a step or two left, right, back, or forward (depending on how far “off” the game judges you to be) for the item to be targeted, and even then, before you have a chance to press your R1 button, the targeting reticle will disappear and you’ll have to start the process again.
Its almost as if the developers took Mr. Incredible and threw him into a classic game which has all the hallmarks of a top-notch title, but then remembered that Mrs. Incredible also plays a huge part in the film, and therefore has to be a part of the game. If Mrs. Incredible’s powers were used to decent effect, we’d be looking at a solid gold title here but as it stands, fifty percent of the game is fairly tough for no apparent reason and is difficult to control to boot. Also of note, is the fact that in Mr. Incredible’s levels, there were no camera “issues” at all, but when his wife steps in there are three or four major problems on each level. To save being able to look through buildings, the camera control with the right analog stick is limited to a certain radius, so it isn’t until you find that the L2 button centres the camera that you’ll have any chance of progression.
As a promotional tool, Heavy Iron Studios’ take on The Incredibles does its job very well. It presents the characters from the movie, some action from the movie, the voices from the movie, the logo of the movie, the styling of the movie and the trailer of the movie. And that makes you want to see the movie. What it forgets to do, however, is present a solid videogame that makes you want to play the videogame. There are genuinely funny moments and the soundtrack and voiceovers are some of the best I’ve heard in a game for a long time, but that doesn’t stop the action from being hackneyed and predictable.
