This review was based on a review copy of the game and not a retail copy, generously furnished by SouthPeak Games.
I have never seen the movie Igor, though I did some research on Wikipedia prior to playing. It generally seems like a children’s movie through and through; the plot is a bit goofy, and sometimes nonsensical, but apparently the humor is pretty good for about half the time, and the world is well-established and different, if I understand correctly. This puts it leaps and bounds above the bundle that was delivered to my doorstep last month.
Pros:
-The game can be completed
-The game can be turned off
-The game can sit nicely between a cool beverage and a wood table
Cons:
-The game
Developed by Legacy Interactive, Igor for Wii is an uninteresting, cringe-inducing mess. To say there is a lack of polish would be an understatement; it’s as if nobody on the design team cared about this game whatsoever. What game actually exists here is done adequately, but there’s just so little to the game that it’s almost insulting. It’s an exercise in mind-numbing repetition that you probably won’t even want to finish; goodness knows I was praying for the end of this game so I could write my review and wash my hands of it (with lye).
The game’s story is loosely borrowed from the movie it’s based on, which is fair, but loosely may be too good a word to use here. Like many other parts of the game, story implementation is half-assed; many events are glossed over, rewritten, or cheapened by boring cutscenes with terrible dialogue. If you haven’t seen the movie, you are not going to have the slightest idea what people are talking about later on in the game. The music seems movie-inspired and does itself alright, and the voice acting is actually fairly competent, which would mean something if the dialogue wasn’t absolutely horrid. The game is pretty ugly as well, especially the title character Igor; environments are fairly bland and repetitive, and the character models feel just “good enough”, though some clearly are not good enough yet. The overall presentation of the game dips into the “bad” territory, weighted down by the cringe-inducing script and general lack of care.
The gameplay is not much better. Legacy wisely decided to shun motion control in favor of a super-simplified control scheme. Using either the Wii Remote or the Remote + Nunchuk combo, you can move, jump, attack, and switch characters, and that’s about it. This in itself is not a bad thing, but unfortunately the game itself is equally oversimplified. Igor is an action platformer at heart, but there’s almost no platforming involved whatsoever, and the action is mind-numbingly repetitive and uninteresting. Through the game’s seven short levels, you’ll mostly travel from one large flat expanse to another, as legions of identical enemies literally rain down on you, ceaselessly in some areas. You’ll occasionally jump up to get some sort of collectible, but most of your time is going to be spent mashing the attack button over and over and over in order to take out enemies that swarm you continually. Seriously, the game’s manual encourages you to mash the button. I hope you’re not too attached to your index fingers, because you’re going to be mashing that button for five straight hours.
The only feature with any potential is the character-switching function. Four characters are always on the screen, and you are encouraged to play co-op with up to three friends, though whether or not they’ll consider you a friend afterwards is a different story. If you play through it single-player like I did, you can hit the minus button to switch characters, as you will need to often do to accomplish specific tasks. Each character’s attack has a unique ability, meaning that only certain characters can get past certain obstacles. This could have been pushed harder, making Igor into a bit of a puzzle platformer if done right; instead, not only is the game incredibly easy, but despite its simple nature, absolutely EVERYTHING is spelled out for you. Unlike other games, which assume the player has basic reasoning skills and can navigate their way out of an empty room, Igor leaves nothing to chance, telling you absolutely everything you need to do and who to do it with, making the game insultingly easy and almost defeating the purpose of multiple characters. Not only is the platforming easy (if it can be so called), but I discovered a very interesting fact later on: it’s impossible to die in this game. If all four characters are knocked out, just wait around for a minute and one will come back right where you left off. Was this game designed for four-year-olds or what? Because I was beating Super Mario World when I was four years old; no one will enjoy a game this simple.
Despite such inane simplicity, the game isn’t even programmed that well. How jumping came into its current form is beyond me. Reading the game’s manual, I found that each character had a different size jump, and that Igor’s was “average”, while Scamper the rabbit was the best jumper; when I actually jumped with Igor, though, he ended up doing some massive superleap, jumping nearly four times his height like some purple, hunchbacked Mario. I then tried jumping with Scamper, who proceeded to leave the Earth’s atmosphere entirely and enter geosyncrohonous orbit. Besides that, jumping just looks, feels, and controls shoddily. The character animations are all very stiff, and you’ll end up gliding across the floor a lot, especially if you move and attack at the same time. Additionally, immediately upon switching characters, you’ll find yourself completely unable to attack or jump for a second, which is a bad situation to be in when surrounded by forty thousand blind robot orphans. And the camera can be controlled by… oh, wait, no it can’t. You’re stuck with a pretty mediocre auto-camera to boot.
In summary, Igor is a terrible game. It was clearly hastily designed, shoddily programmed, and shoved out the door in order to make time with the movie, because there is no part of this game that I feel got any more attention than the absolute minimum. It’s one of the game’s better points that it can actually be completed at all, and it says a lot about your patience if you actually play it for that long. I give Igor for Wii a wholehearted Nay!, awarding it my worst score ever and encouraging nobody to buy it, not even children who are fans of the movie. If you see it on a store shelf, I recommend slapping a Biohazard sticker on it so no one else makes that mistake either.
Aside from the horrible Wii game, I also ended up playing Igor for the DS, and thankfully it’s a much more competent game, though not great by any means. The story is a bit different from that of the Wii game; Eva has been kidnapped, and you build another monster in response, hoping to use it to win tournaments and eventually defeat Eva’s kidnapper to win her back. As you progress through the game, you’ll continually reinvent your creature with superior parts, in order to move up the ranks and become stronger. In addition to battling in tournaments, you’ll also end up taking on various missions to obtain different materials or more gold.
Shortly after beginning the game, I realized that Igor DS is essentially a poor man’s Puzzle Quest. Your method of batting consists of playing a Puyo Pop-inspired puzzle game, where you match similarly colored gems in order to power up body parts, so as to conduct attacks. The more you battle, the more gold and parts you’ll get; you can use these to create stronger body parts for your monster, essentially leveling yourself up RPG style. In practice, the system actually works fairly well; playing the puzzle game can be pretty fun, and the leveling up system is fairly straightforward, though allowing for creativity. Unfortunately, the entire game is very, very slow. In battle, it takes a long time to build up enough energy to even make a single punch, which means each battle is going to last an extremely long time, and you’re going to be fighting a lot of battles. It also takes quite a while to get enough ingredients to upgrade your monster, which means you’ll be grinding an awful lot.
As far as presentation goes, there’s no voice acting, and the music is only adequate. The art style of the movie, though, translates fairly well to the DS, and while things may be a little simplistic, it’s also got a rather appealing look to it, especially the hand-drawn portions (of which there are many). On the downside, the game’s interface is needlessly convoluted and hard to navigate. Finding places to go in the overworld is difficult, as nothing is labeled properly, nor does anything look like it should; a shop should not look like a massive field of rock spires. On top of that, the menus are too many and too complex; you’ll rotate random gears in order to find a single part to attach to your monster, you’ll be completely baffled by numerous, badly-marked buttons in the shops, and even finding where to save is troubling.
The game definitely exhibits more care than its Wii counterpart, though its good gameplay is inhibited by a convoluted interface and bad pacing. It’s hard to say whether fans of the movie are going to like the game very much; it’s a bit complex for younger gamers, but it’s too mundane for older gamers. If, however, your kids REALLY love the world of Igor, and have a DS, you could do worse than buy this for them.
Single Player: 5.0
Multiplayer: N/A
Controls: 4.5
Graphics: 6.8
Sound: 5.2
Replay Value: 3.5
Overall: 5.0
