With Shrek’s’ 20th Anniversary this year I figured I would look back at the four video games based on his movies, the first game simply titled Shrek in it’s original Xbox release or Shrek Extra Large in the Gamecube remake. The Nintendo version developed by Digital illusions is the version I am taking a look back at today.
In the game Princess Fiona has been kidnapped by the evil wizard Merlin and locked in his dark tower, Shrek the lovable ogre he is must travel the land doing good deeds for fairy tale creatures to help in his quest to rescue his true love.
As you can tell this movie tie in game has nothing to do with the film in fact the game is so weird I think it was developed before the films release as in the movie Shrek is far from a kind and friendly individual and while on the cover, Donkey makes no appearance and of course the films villain Lord Farquad is nowhere in sight either.
In the game Shrek’s main means of attack are punching and kicking but he can also use his advanced flatulence techniques and burps to stun enemies and by lighting his farts of fire he can even cause explosions. throughout the game you also discover two new techniques the super punch and ground slam, both I hardly used but were useful in very rare occasions.
The game has ten unique levels and its quite creative to say the least because every level has different themes, enemies and a compelling story narration. The use of various fairy tale characters also helps to make game feel different at every turn, in one level you will be fighting witches, in another helping Red Riding Hood find her candy basket or perhaps lighting fires to attract a Dragon.
However its not all good because the majority of missions are very repetetive there are basically three types in the game, collecting all of the eggs and fairies, transporting characters to a destination or defeating enemies with fists or fire.
While these missions do vary in theming it is hard to look past the fact that they are essentially all the same.
The game controls pretty terribly as well, they decided against a double jump in exchange for wall jumping but the slippery controls makes this very hard, Shrek’s jumps are floaty and hard to land, the platforming can be extremely challenging because of this. Also there are parts where you need to kick enemies into specific areas but the kick seems to have a mind of its own at times because if you are not 100 percent precise you will likely miss, I can see younger players turning the game off because of these controls which is shame because the game is fairly ambitious in its story telling.
Surprisingly for a licenced game the music is actually ok. it not the best video game music I have ever heard but you can tell some effort was put into it, each area has a unique soundtrack which mostly fits in well enough and none of the music in the game is repetitive or feels like a rushed job.
So what can I say about Shrek Extra Large?
Its ok, the game is far from being considered good but I think it could have been if those controls were better and more ambition was put into the mission structure, every else is ok, the worlds are each unique as well as the music and even the voice acting is pretty good, I really like the narration of the story before and after each mission. I will play this game again as I actually did enjoy playing it but I cant really give it a better than average score because it does have some serious problems and its good qualities are not even that great to begin with and so a 5/10 seems the fairest a score I can give.
Follow me on Twitch where I play games, often before reviewing them, In fact I played this game on twitch recently and will be starting Shrek 2 tonight 13-05-2021 at 7pm GMT if you wanna join me !
I have linked my account filmzguy below !
https://www.twitch.tv/filmzguy
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