Shrek Extra Large

"The only thing "Extra Large" about this Mediocrity is its Movie License."

Ah yes Shrek, a 2001 animated film from Dreamworks that has achieved all sorts of praise in various sorts of ways. (I mean it was indeed the first animated film to receive the award of “Best Animated Feature” and as much as I loved “Monsters Inc.” I can understand why.) It was loved by many including yours truly, granted it along with its sequel has had its fair share of detractors that state that's its more "hip blatant in-your face comedy" than actual good storytelling. But still despite that it was considered to be a worthy opponent to Pixar's throne in cinematic 3-D animation. Unfortunately its Video game history on the other hand wasn't no where NEAR as fortunate and praised. While things were sort of starting to pick for the series when Activision took over and made games for Shrek 2. (Though not much better I'm afraid to say.) Barely known 3rd party company by the name of TDK Interactive for the most part did the game work on the first movie. And the overall consensus was just plain lukewarm. However I will state that its not entirely undeserving to be quite honest. I am one of the VERY few people whom actually found the Game Boy Color game “Shrek: Fairy Tale Freakdown” to be a underrated little above-average treat. So I played this 3-D platformer for the Nintendo Gamecube in hope that I would find this one to be nicely underrated as well? Were my expectations met? *sigh* Sadly no such luck…

Well I'm in a rather good mood so I'd thought I share with you all and what good points it has first. While nothing special the Graphics and Music in this game are tolerable. The Control Factor is Satisfactory enough and it has some pretty decent gameplay elements and the overall level design is not too shabby. Not too mention that is tutorial section is pretty good and in-depth and has some semblance of flavor of its renowned cinematic license. And compared to the likes of "Actraiser 2", "Wally Bear and the No! Gang" and the like its relatively harmless. But alas as Harmless as it maybe its also pretty darn flawed as well.

Well for starters there is the awfully bad Camera Angling while this game is not the worst in this aspect its still too awfully dizzying for my tastes. But then again luckily this was in a very much 3rd person perspective which is not quite as easy to botch up as other points of view but this game is pretty darn close to that. And while I did say that the tutorial does have a pretty decent sense of faithfulness to the film the rest of the game doesn't. (And even in the tutorial its not much here, I mean for the most part its the Magic Mirror along with Shrek in his homeland swamp with his brawling skills and occasional dirty tactics such as farting in. Sure of the areas there dojn't look exactly like the movie but hey the style of its execution doesn't really betray the overall source material.) And from that it pretty much stops here as now the whole game looks like some generic euro-medieval world. The new storyline for the game is nothing all that memorable at all. And the various memorable comical side characters from the movie are pretty much non-existant in this as well. The biggest problem with this game is that it barely captures the feel of its wonderful cinematic countepart and is just simply a generic 3-D platformer.

Overall this game is quite possibly one of the definitions of GameCube games that you should only give it a cheap rental at the most alongside the likes of Turok Evolution. In retrospection it probably would've been for the best if TDK Interactive made it a fighting game like they did with FairyTale Freakdown. Whether it have been a 3-D fighter, 2-D fighter or a 2-D fighter with 3-D like graphics ala Super Smash Bros. Melee... Granted it'll most likely be far from the par of the best works from the likes of Capcom, SNK, Namco and Tecmo but chances are it would've most likely been a more satisfying experience then this. Basically if you want a good 3-D platformer starring a big brawling fat guy with not-so good manners for your Nintendo GameCube get Wario World. While not QUITE as bad as the likes of Super Man 64 and the PC version of Beast Wars this is another 3-D platformer based on a known license that just... went... nowhere...

+ Pretty good Graphics and Music
+ Decent Control
+ Tutorial is actually not that bad
+ Gameplay attack structure is pretty good as well.
+ There has been worse botch-ups for Licenses
- Terrible Camera Angles
- The Actual Game has very little to do with the Movie itself therefore wasting its license
- Unmemorable new storyline
- Even the company whom made has done better
- Barely any replay value at all.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 03/17/05, Updated 03/18/05