So.. I loved the movie and Rhino had a B2G1F sale on preowned games, so I figured.. what the hell. Not much could go wrong. I expected a mediocre action platformer, and for the most part, it was. Some would argue that it's kiddy-ish, and sure, it is.. until you get to around the 50% mark of the game.
Half of the Incredibles selling point is, obviously, the movie, and to that end, it fairs well. The graphics are great (in the sense that it's mimicking the movie) and the incredi-powers are alright (though I got a feeling of Deja-Vu when playing as Mr. Incredible on the roof.. reminded me a LOT of Hulk). The voice-overs sorta have the voice actors from the movie.. it seems like the voices are taken from the movie, or were leftover, or something. Samuel L. Jackson seems a little too excited to fill the role of the narrator.
So.. where does it go wrong? You play as Mr. and Mrs. Incredible, Dash, and Violet, each in their own level. The game is extremely linear. The game falters around level 10, or where Mr. Incredible lands on the island for the second time, right after he's too fat to get through the tube on the ship.
For those that remember the movie, it gets cheap with the huge ball that "learns" from you. You have a fight with it in the lava, and that's an okay fight. This is, hands down, the hardest boss you will ever fight in any game, ever. EVER. You have his life down to 10%, and you finally throw that final blow.. until you realize that he has three health bars, not one.
The huge ball (omnidroid) has several attacks when you fight it in the lava. It takes a while, but it's doable. This is where the game begins to get cheap. The ball rolls towards you, and it's not a problem to roll out of the way. For the first and second lifebars, it roams around, swings at you, then jumps far away and throws rocks. For the third lifebar, he shoots beams and can set the ground on fire.
The second Omnidroid, right before you meet Syndrome (you actually don't meet Syndrome at all.. the fight starts when the Omnidroid pulls Mr. Incredible out of the meeting room, and after that fight, it shows him jump off the waterfall.. never introduces Syndrome), is without a doubt the most frustrating moment in any video game, ever. Not only does he start out with the rolling and arm attacks, but he also uses beams and the beam on the ground that sets the ground on fire.. in addition to this, there's mines in the water and the omnidroid can throw its spinny things around and they keep flying towards you until they hit you. If Omnidroid is in the middle of an animation (especially a picking up rock animation) and you throw a rock, forget about it.. it'll hit it on the head, but it won't register it. The most frustrating part of this fight (and the whole game) is that you do NOT get a few seconds of invincibility if you get hit. This leads to very, very, VERY frustrating moments. One of my most frustrating points in the game was jumping, getting hit by a beam, another beam, another beam, then I flew into the water, hit a mine, flew back on the land, got hit by another beam, and died. There was nothing I could do.
I will admit it - for the second omnidroid, I had to use cheats to pass it. I tried for an hour and a half to beat it, my brother tried for 45 minutes - it was damn near impossible. There's a code to "add 25% health to your life", and I had to use that code at least 10 times.
The next map is inside Syndrome's base, where you'll fight another equally cheap robot machine. At this, Mr. Incredible says "This is getting ridiculous" and repeats the same phrase five times through the fight. Between mines, lasers, and fire, I barely beat the robot, only to run into laser beams.. oh, but wait a second, they only take a tiny bit of health out. Some security bars.
There were two points that made me throw the controller down and decide to trade this in. The first, obviously, came from the Omnidroid (I was having a blast up until then). The second was inside Syndrome's base, after the second omnidroid. The enemy's blaster ammo seems to follow you whereever you move.. so imagine my frustration when I have to get to the end of a platform that's guarded by two security guards that are shooting at me. I keep falling off the platform and am hit multiple times by their blaster fire. The other part that was the nail in the coffin was some stupid point inside the base where I had to turn these wheel things to get some stupid electricity thing to turn off so I could "incredi-jump" by pulling a metal rod down and fly way up.. well, if you hit B to grab the wheel then accidentally let go, don't expect to be able to hit B and grab it again - you have to walk off the platform and 2 or 3 feet away, then come back and try to use it again.. and by the way, the electricity stays off for a short time and then comes back on. You will have to rotate that stupid wheel thing multiple times, and each time, it cuts to a cinematic showing you which electric parts have stopped. After my 10th time of turning that stupid
ing wheel, I accidentally fell into a bottomless pit and promptly threw my controller down and hit the eject/open tray button as fast as I could.
While it has its fun spots, overall, the game is pretty bad. I'll give it a 3/10. I want to try the later levels, but the "unlock all level codes", even though it says it works when I put it in, doesn't work. I wonder if this game was even finished.
For those wondering, I played this on the XBox.
Well THQ, between Wrestlemania 21 and The Incredibles, i'm 0-2 with you.. you guys better not screw up with Destroy All Humans.
Half of the Incredibles selling point is, obviously, the movie, and to that end, it fairs well. The graphics are great (in the sense that it's mimicking the movie) and the incredi-powers are alright (though I got a feeling of Deja-Vu when playing as Mr. Incredible on the roof.. reminded me a LOT of Hulk). The voice-overs sorta have the voice actors from the movie.. it seems like the voices are taken from the movie, or were leftover, or something. Samuel L. Jackson seems a little too excited to fill the role of the narrator.
So.. where does it go wrong? You play as Mr. and Mrs. Incredible, Dash, and Violet, each in their own level. The game is extremely linear. The game falters around level 10, or where Mr. Incredible lands on the island for the second time, right after he's too fat to get through the tube on the ship.
For those that remember the movie, it gets cheap with the huge ball that "learns" from you. You have a fight with it in the lava, and that's an okay fight. This is, hands down, the hardest boss you will ever fight in any game, ever. EVER. You have his life down to 10%, and you finally throw that final blow.. until you realize that he has three health bars, not one.
The huge ball (omnidroid) has several attacks when you fight it in the lava. It takes a while, but it's doable. This is where the game begins to get cheap. The ball rolls towards you, and it's not a problem to roll out of the way. For the first and second lifebars, it roams around, swings at you, then jumps far away and throws rocks. For the third lifebar, he shoots beams and can set the ground on fire.
The second Omnidroid, right before you meet Syndrome (you actually don't meet Syndrome at all.. the fight starts when the Omnidroid pulls Mr. Incredible out of the meeting room, and after that fight, it shows him jump off the waterfall.. never introduces Syndrome), is without a doubt the most frustrating moment in any video game, ever. Not only does he start out with the rolling and arm attacks, but he also uses beams and the beam on the ground that sets the ground on fire.. in addition to this, there's mines in the water and the omnidroid can throw its spinny things around and they keep flying towards you until they hit you. If Omnidroid is in the middle of an animation (especially a picking up rock animation) and you throw a rock, forget about it.. it'll hit it on the head, but it won't register it. The most frustrating part of this fight (and the whole game) is that you do NOT get a few seconds of invincibility if you get hit. This leads to very, very, VERY frustrating moments. One of my most frustrating points in the game was jumping, getting hit by a beam, another beam, another beam, then I flew into the water, hit a mine, flew back on the land, got hit by another beam, and died. There was nothing I could do.
I will admit it - for the second omnidroid, I had to use cheats to pass it. I tried for an hour and a half to beat it, my brother tried for 45 minutes - it was damn near impossible. There's a code to "add 25% health to your life", and I had to use that code at least 10 times.
The next map is inside Syndrome's base, where you'll fight another equally cheap robot machine. At this, Mr. Incredible says "This is getting ridiculous" and repeats the same phrase five times through the fight. Between mines, lasers, and fire, I barely beat the robot, only to run into laser beams.. oh, but wait a second, they only take a tiny bit of health out. Some security bars.
There were two points that made me throw the controller down and decide to trade this in. The first, obviously, came from the Omnidroid (I was having a blast up until then). The second was inside Syndrome's base, after the second omnidroid. The enemy's blaster ammo seems to follow you whereever you move.. so imagine my frustration when I have to get to the end of a platform that's guarded by two security guards that are shooting at me. I keep falling off the platform and am hit multiple times by their blaster fire. The other part that was the nail in the coffin was some stupid point inside the base where I had to turn these wheel things to get some stupid electricity thing to turn off so I could "incredi-jump" by pulling a metal rod down and fly way up.. well, if you hit B to grab the wheel then accidentally let go, don't expect to be able to hit B and grab it again - you have to walk off the platform and 2 or 3 feet away, then come back and try to use it again.. and by the way, the electricity stays off for a short time and then comes back on. You will have to rotate that stupid wheel thing multiple times, and each time, it cuts to a cinematic showing you which electric parts have stopped. After my 10th time of turning that stupid
ing wheel, I accidentally fell into a bottomless pit and promptly threw my controller down and hit the eject/open tray button as fast as I could.While it has its fun spots, overall, the game is pretty bad. I'll give it a 3/10. I want to try the later levels, but the "unlock all level codes", even though it says it works when I put it in, doesn't work. I wonder if this game was even finished.
For those wondering, I played this on the XBox.
Well THQ, between Wrestlemania 21 and The Incredibles, i'm 0-2 with you.. you guys better not screw up with Destroy All Humans.
