Jumper: Griffin's Story

"You'll only be playing this for the achievement points."

Since I was falling behind on the Gamerscore leaderboards and hadn't played a beat 'em up in a while - I decided to ignore the massive criticism this game had encountered and rent it for a single night from the local video store. Thirty minutes and 500 points later I yanked the disc out of my 360 and began to formulate a review I would eventually post on Gamefaqs about my experience with Jumper. Onto it now..

Story ?/10

I never saw the movie since it looked like another run-of-the-mill overload of CGI effects and had my ever-so-hated rating of PG-13. It features Hayden Christensen fresh from ruining Darth Vader in the second and third Star Wars prequels - so I probably wasn't missing much. I skipped all the cutscenes aside from the "Jump Kills" which I'll mention later.

Graphics 3/10

Once the game started I found myself staring at graphics that would look subpar on a PS2 title from the early 2000s. The environments were bland and uninspired - typically rooms connected together to link one battle to the next without any real concern for aesthetics. The character models all moved about like hunchbacks when they aimlessly ran around - which they did pretty much any time a new enemy was introduced. The only time the visuals had any kind of merit was during the "Jump Kill" cutscenes, in which they looked relatively decent for a period of 8 seconds while the videos played. Overall, I'm pretty ashamed to have such a lousy graphical representation on my modern console of choice.

Sound 3/10

The soundtrack was unremarkable and I have trouble remembering anything about it despite having heard it so recently. The enemies spout off a bunch of inane lines while fighting the protagonist - much of it reminding of the terrible dialogue from shows like the Power Rangers. The battle effects weren't anything to write home about and probably took less than a half-hour for the developers to record and slap into place.

Control 5/10

The fights use the face buttons on the controller to designate what kind of attack you'll be using and from what angle. So, forgoing traditional battle approach - I am left with something resembling the analog-stick brawling from Rise to Honor / Death by Degrees. While this method doesn't seem too bad at first, as the enemies increase in number and difficulty any kind of appreciation I had for the unconventional method of attacking vaporized. Button mashing and cursing ensued as I had to battle bosses who blocked my attacks while I tried to damage their unprotected side alternating between buttons instead of, say, moving around them in a more direct approach. Aside from the combat portion of the game - there were also a couple of pseudo-platforming sections that did nothing but annoy me with the cliche objectives that I somehow had to accomplish using a control scheme that felt as foreign and unrelated as possible.

Game-play 3/10

Jumper is a beat 'em up that - despite introducing a semi-original concept of combat - feels more dated than titles from the early 90s. Your character attacks through teleportation - kind of like X-Men's Nightcrawler, instead of the usual walking around punching and kicking method. This could have been a welcome method of battle if everything built around the brawling didn't feel like it was scripted by the most primitive parameters of the beat 'em up genre. You encounter enemies, you defeat said enemies to open a sealed off door, and the cycle repeats. The result is a choppy series of fisticuffs that makes it painfully obvious that the developers had created little to work with and instead prolonged the experience by adding more pointless rooms to repeat the same old type of situation in. It feels similar to grinding for money or experience points in a MMORPG - a chore instead of an entertaining session. Now, I know that brawlers are built upon a series of repetition - but good titles like Final Fight had an almost organic flow where each encounter felt like a layer carefully crafted upon the previous one instead of a cheap product that simply feels packaged to whatever came before or after it. In fact, one of the only real positive things this game has to offer is that occasionally you teleport an enemy (through a pre-rendered cutscene which I call a Jump Kill) to some remote location where you leave them to die a grisly death in an otherwise pretty tame game. I wish the active game-play could have offered more situations like crushing a guy in a hydraulic press or dropping him into the path of a nuclear blast instead of "teleport-kick", "teleport-punch" ad nauseum.

Replay value 1/10

I only managed to suffer through enough of the game to unlock 500 of the 1000 possible achievement points. I suspect only seriously dedicated Gamerscore addicts will bother getting the rest of them - and I know most brawlers enthusiasts will quit out after seeing what the first two levels offer in entertainment.

Overall 3/10

Seeing as this game was made for three consoles (Wii, PS2, 360) despite being such an unsavory product - I can conclude it was only created to profit as a quick-cash scheme. You know, the type of game that reels in oblivious consumers with a flashy cover and license based on whatever fleeting movie is currently popular? I gave the overall rating an extra point for the "Jump Kill" cutscenes, and even then it ranks as one of the lowest beat 'em up experiences currently available for the modern consoles.

Reviewer's Score: 3/10, Originally Posted: 07/28/08

Game Release: Jumper: Griffin's Story (US, 02/12/08)