Shrek: Hassle at the Castle

"This game is like onions - it will cause you to cry"

Shrek: Hassle at the Castle is really a terrible game. I don't even know why I got it. I'm not even that big of a Shrek fan! Oh well. The game attempts to mirror the movie, Shrek. Unfortunately, it really fails. Much of the story gets skipped or misinterpreted. There are only like 12 levels in the entire game. How much of a joke is that? It isn't a funny joke, that's for sure. It's more of those sad jokes like those dead baby jokes that you can't help but laugh at. Yeah, this game is like that except for the laughing part. The levels are actually quite difficult on just normal mode. I don't consider myself an amateur gamer so this game was a little excessive on the difficulty even on just normal mode. I know why the game is so difficult though. As you may have already guessed, the developers of this game were lazy and just made a few really difficult levels as opposed to a satisfactory amount of levels that make up a good game. The game play itself is fairly similar to ordinary platformers where you pretty much go through the monotonous levels jumping on bad guys heads to kill them. Because Shrek has a secret – he desires to be the next Mario. Or he'll throw the occasional punch like a smelly, stupid ogor should do. You know what really grinds my gears about this game? If you go into a swamp, you die. Now, let's analyze just exactly how ridiculous this is. If Shrek, an ogor, who lives in a swamp, goes into a swamp, he dies. Yeah, the game makers were stupid.

The best aspect of this game would be the graphics. The graphics were not good, they were not bad, they were mediocre. Run of the mill graphics for the GBA. There wasn't a whole lot of shapes though, there are only like 5 different varieties of enemies. But you can play Shrek, Donkey, & Fiona and they were drawn pretty well. The sound was actually bad. When you kill a guy, it sounds really garbled like a Frenchman choking on something. The sounds make no sense in this game at all. The soundtrack is either non-existent or downright atrocious. I really turned down my volume most of the game because the soundtrack was literally unbearable. Replay value for this game? There is none. It was such torture playing through this game one time that someone would have to pay me to play it again. This game has absolutely NO replay value. None. Side quests? Sadly, this game had no secrets and no side quests. It was straightforward through the game. Hell, you couldn't even go back and play levels you had already beaten. For shame. Overall this game just ultimately fails in pretty much every aspect. Easily one of the worst games I've ever played. A mockery to Shrek.

Reviewer's Score: 2/10, Originally Posted: 05/28/04, Updated 01/02/07