Power Rangers: Super Legends

""Alpha! A bad game has been released! Acquire a sledgehammer with attitude!""

We all do stupid things every now and then. Some of us actually take a large swig of Gold Lager. Some of us think that nothing could go wrong going into a candle store with your mom. Some of us ask the wrong girl the big question and end up being miserable for the rest of our non-single lives. And then some of us purposefully go out and play games we know could be nothing other than absolutely terrible experiences that will never be mentioned to anyone ever again out of shame. Power Ranger: Super Legends just happens to fill that space in my life now.

To be fair, and to provide a more clear view of what bias I had going in, I fully knew renting it that it was going to be awful. My reasoning, however, was that I wanted to review a bad game and I decided what better bad game to look at than one featuring my childhood obsession. So, onward we go into the crud.

The game's story is pretty much what you'd expect from a Power Ranger piece of merchandise. There's some Omega Ranger in the future, or alternate timeline, or some other convoluted setting that's unclear. Anyways, this Omega Ranger comes across his general awesomeness, Lord Zedd. Seems old Z is up to no good, screwing around with all the timelines with plot-convenient time crystals. Zedd runs off with what crystals he can and begins recruiting other villains to kick all of the Rangers' asses. Omega Ranger begins his own conscription program and starts gathering up what other rangers he can to thwart Zedd.

The story is told through some cruddy, half-hearted cartoons that make Flash look like a high standard of animation. While the game does earn personal points from me for featuring Lord Zedd, the same villain who was protested against by a group of parents for being too evil of an antagonist for a child's show, it loses a lot for not having his original voice actor. Never mind the fact that all the voice acting here sucks anyways. Still, the selection is mildly appreciated.

I'm assuming that whoever developed this game must have loved doing so and getting paid for it, because the whole game reeks of lazy design. The game is all played through “side-scrolling beat-em up” style. You'd think it'd be easy to make a fun game with such a juvenile design choice, but no. The enemies range from being insultingly easy to cheaply impossible. The combat is dull, and it eventually wears down to relying on your uppercut-midair kick combo to make it through the infinite hordes of baddies. Through this whole affair, I was wondering where the hell were my ranger's weapons? Where's that axe or sword they're supposed to have? If those were at least in here, I could have given the game play the miniscule merit of novelty, but it's way too dull. Even the special attacks don't feature anything interesting, just your character doing some stupid pose they did in the show. About the only redeeming thing about actually playing the game are the megazord battles, but then it's hard to screw that up too badly when the entirety of it consists of button-reflex sequences, a la God of War and Shenmue.

Another point I need to make for my own sake is that the Zeo Rangers aren't in here at all, my favorite series from my tyke-ish years. This game is supposed to be a 15th year anniversary for the franchise, so why isn't everything in here? God knows it wouldn't have evolved beyond more than skin change since every level is just a bunch of blocks/platforms with lame puzzles and too many enemies with the only difference between them being the background. The game misses too many of the series to be considered an anniversary: Zeo, Turbo, In Space, Lightspeed Rescue, Wild Force, Time Force, Mystic Force, etc. (Now that I think about it, there are a lot of Forces in the Ranger canon, the jumbled mess that it is). It seems like they were simply going for all the series that only 8 year olds today would know about.

I had to look at my PS2 several times throughout my playtime with this and I couldn't help but be a bit taken aback. “There is no way I'm playing a PS2 right now,” I thought because the graphics are absolute junk. If it weren't for the framerate, I could have sworn someone had switched my PS2 with a PS1. They're just that bad.

The worst offender about this game may just be the music. Sure, you're considered the world's biggest loser if you admit that you even liked Power Rangers in your forgivable, younger years. But even some of the biggest critics still loved the themes, particularly the original for its opening riff. So where the hell are they? None of the original tunes from the shows made into this game. Instead, we're treated to an inexhaustible supply of generic, unremarkable rock music. Maybe the novelty could have been reinforced had that at least been in here, but apparently the producers of this game were only endeavoring to make something that would rival *Superman 64 in terms of absolute crap-festivity.

So, there you have it, I hope you're happy. I endured the worst to bring you… well to bring you something, at any rate. I went in expecting a bad game with at least some measure of nostalgic novelty, and I just got a bad game. I already had faith that no serious gamer would ever buy this on their lonesome, but just in case you weren't fully certain in your decision, allow me to reinforce that. Do not even play Power Ranger: Super Legends unless you want sufficient justification for murdering the closest, living being to you out of violent insanity.

Reviewer's Score: 3/10, Originally Posted: 12/21/07

Game Release: Power Rangers: Super Legends (US, 11/06/07)