Universal Studios Theme Parks Adventure

"This makes the Gamecube look bad..."

Well… Well… well… a game that takes place in a theme park. Seems like a whole lot of fun but is Universal Studios Theme Park as fun as the real place? No. Instead of buying this game save your money to go to the actual theme park.

Gameplay: This game is as fun as counting monkeys and it’s also frustrating too. Kemco must have wanted to bring the realism from a theme park into this game. Because you literally can spend 30 minutes looking for a ride and on your way you’ll meet stupid people and do stupid things (like picking up trash). Another thing you can do to get more points is to shake hands with those annoying mascots. And after you shake hands with them they follow you until you go out of the screen. Also finding the location of a ride can be virtually impossible to find and using the map isn’t helping either because you can’t really see where you are. You simply just see what “region” you’re in, for example, if your in the E.T. region and you want to go Jaws area. That could be a virtually impossible task. And then when you get there you realize there’s too long of a line and you need a stupid cap to ride it. Then when you get the cap you go on the ride and realize the ride sucks and it was a waste of time to even try to get. And some of the rides are ridiculously long. Like the Jurassic Park ride its like a 15 minute mini-game and at the very end you run out of health and lose thus having to start all over again. Therefore the gameplay score receives a 3 and I’m being generous because there are some fun games you can do.

Story: You run around an amusement park doing some stupid things. Kemco should have added some story into the game. Anything to keep the player hooked. So 0

Graphics:The graphics are so dull. You’re running around and the backgrounds look like paintings therefore there is no life to them. And plus your looking for pieces of trash and other things they are hardly noticeable. And the main character is the only thing that looks good. The main character (which you can choose from a multitude of) looks like a little 6-year-old running through Universal Studios. Now why would a 6 year old be alone in a huge amusement park? The graphics don’t show the capabilities of a Gamecube and they look more like very good Playstation 1 graphics. Therefore graphics deserve 1.

Sound and Audio: Sound and music is crud. Isn’t just so horrible because the music is so lame. It’s not fun to listen to and certainly not something to bop your head to. Anyways the sound isn’t as bad as the music but it’s still pretty bad. It sounds like you’re actually in an amusement park so the sound and music deserve a 2.

Rent of buy? Eh?: Frankly those 5 dollars you earn would be much better if you set it on fire. But if you have to try this game out you should rent it because some of the mini-games are somewhat fun. So definably RENT!! Don’t just automatically buy it!

Reviewer's Score: 2/10, Originally Posted: 01/26/02, Updated 01/26/02