Belly-Sledding is a detached and wholly intangible mass of 'races'. The control schematic dictates that players tilt the Wii Remote forward to speed up, backward to slow down, and side-to-side to steer; jump counter-intuitively is mapped to the 1 button. However, after spending the best part of a day playing Happy Feet I'm not entirely sure how this element of the game should actually be played.
Here's the skinny: Tilt forward - Win race. Don't tilt forward - Lose race. Each race is burdened with a story-line but the basics remain unchanged. The developers brilliantly included boosters in the runs, truly pushing the envelope of modern videogaming. The fact is, Belly-Sledding could have been quite good, could have at least stolen a few of the good ideas spawned by 1080 all those years ago. But what is delivered is a section that confusingly claims to be more complex than it is. Tutorials mention gates, directional arrows and ice formations; none of these matter. Simply tilt forward and win each 'race'. Shame really...
Swimming is perhaps the worst example of why Happy Feet is that most common of entertainment released - a lazy licensed cash-in. A penguin under the ice is a miraculous image, the stuff of Sunday night Attenborough documentaries that expanded the mind of the young viewer, realising as we did the struggle faced by wildlife in such harsh, barely-terrestrial, worlds. What you get here is an on-rails pointing game, with various collecting tasks to waste your life. The game drags your character along and you simply motion in the desired direction within screen. This is an area of the title, much like Belly-Sledding, that could have been developed into something that would have some sort of value to some players. It delivers the minimum possible on all levels.
Addressing what seems on the surface to be a just objection, I am arguably not the best reviewer of Happy Feet. I haven't seen the movie and am not of the target age for the game. That said, this is quite frankly, still a nonsense of a game. I have played games, good and bad, quite literally from the moment I was able to hold a VCS joystick. I stood on chairs to play Scramble and played to a level that I'm hard-pressed to match today. I knew then as I know now what makes a good videogame and this is not it.
Children deserve more from a game than this offers. Happy Feet is the worst kind of 'make them shut up and stare at a TV screen' irresponsible entertainment. It's just doing 'stuff' over and over again, taking time that would be better spent doing quite literally anything else, even sleeping, even staring at the wall and examining one's own inner monologue. I cannot blame the developers for this entirely, although they should have stepped up and tried to do that oh so rare of things - give the moneyhats the big FU and make a proper game on some level.
SPOnG Rating: E
There's really nothing to see here. Happy Feet may well sell very well, carried along by the current marketing blitz for merchandise from the series currently saturating children's TV in the US. If so, I’d imagine that at the their next meeting producer, Remi Racine, and publishing executive producer, Richard Hicks, will be greeted with something along the lines of, "Well done guys, you successfully managed to sell a game that has almost zero worth as a stand-alone product. Here's the next WB license, let's see some more magic!" Senior Producer for Warner Interactive Heidi Behrendt might get a raise and a promotion if Happy Feet sells well. So that's something to look forward to...
Here's the skinny: Tilt forward - Win race. Don't tilt forward - Lose race. Each race is burdened with a story-line but the basics remain unchanged. The developers brilliantly included boosters in the runs, truly pushing the envelope of modern videogaming. The fact is, Belly-Sledding could have been quite good, could have at least stolen a few of the good ideas spawned by 1080 all those years ago. But what is delivered is a section that confusingly claims to be more complex than it is. Tutorials mention gates, directional arrows and ice formations; none of these matter. Simply tilt forward and win each 'race'. Shame really...
Swimming is perhaps the worst example of why Happy Feet is that most common of entertainment released - a lazy licensed cash-in. A penguin under the ice is a miraculous image, the stuff of Sunday night Attenborough documentaries that expanded the mind of the young viewer, realising as we did the struggle faced by wildlife in such harsh, barely-terrestrial, worlds. What you get here is an on-rails pointing game, with various collecting tasks to waste your life. The game drags your character along and you simply motion in the desired direction within screen. This is an area of the title, much like Belly-Sledding, that could have been developed into something that would have some sort of value to some players. It delivers the minimum possible on all levels.
Addressing what seems on the surface to be a just objection, I am arguably not the best reviewer of Happy Feet. I haven't seen the movie and am not of the target age for the game. That said, this is quite frankly, still a nonsense of a game. I have played games, good and bad, quite literally from the moment I was able to hold a VCS joystick. I stood on chairs to play Scramble and played to a level that I'm hard-pressed to match today. I knew then as I know now what makes a good videogame and this is not it.
Children deserve more from a game than this offers. Happy Feet is the worst kind of 'make them shut up and stare at a TV screen' irresponsible entertainment. It's just doing 'stuff' over and over again, taking time that would be better spent doing quite literally anything else, even sleeping, even staring at the wall and examining one's own inner monologue. I cannot blame the developers for this entirely, although they should have stepped up and tried to do that oh so rare of things - give the moneyhats the big FU and make a proper game on some level.
SPOnG Rating: E
There's really nothing to see here. Happy Feet may well sell very well, carried along by the current marketing blitz for merchandise from the series currently saturating children's TV in the US. If so, I’d imagine that at the their next meeting producer, Remi Racine, and publishing executive producer, Richard Hicks, will be greeted with something along the lines of, "Well done guys, you successfully managed to sell a game that has almost zero worth as a stand-alone product. Here's the next WB license, let's see some more magic!" Senior Producer for Warner Interactive Heidi Behrendt might get a raise and a promotion if Happy Feet sells well. So that's something to look forward to...
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Comments
ajmetz 9 Dec 2006 07:47
1/1
Been suspicious about this for ages, as they were so late releasing screenshots, and at E3 only had the movie's trailer, not the game trailer. Even the print adverts didn't have shots of the game at first. Thanks for confirming our fears on the quality of the title.