Madagascar
Posted June 20, 2005
Most of the time when a movie is translated to a video game there are a lot of things to be afraid of, such as the Enter the Matrix debacle, or the always entertaining Total Recall on the NES. And naturally as an adult gamer, I did have a lot of reservations when it came to playing Madagascar, published by Activision and based on the DreamWorks movie of the same name that has all the kids dragging their parents to the overpriced theaters.
Madagascar (both the movie and the game) follows the exploits of a crew of animals that live in a zoo in New York City; Marty the zebra, Alex the lion, Gloria the hippo, and Melman the giraffe. On Marty’s tenth birthday in the zoo he starts to develop a mid-life crisis, wondering exactly what his life means in the zoo. Staring at the mural that’s painted on the wall in front of his treadmill, and by a little prompting by the crafty penguins that are planning their escape to Antarctica Marty decides to plan a daring escape from the zoo, and make his way to “the wild”, either Connecticut or Kenya, it doesn’t matter.
The game opens with a shot taken directly from the movie, but sadly that’s the only actual movie footage that I saw in the four hours that it took me to complete the eleven levels of Madagascar, including spending a fair amount of time on a couple of the fun mini-games included. It’s too bad that they didn’t use more actual footage from the movie, and it would have fit very well into the game as aside from a few small detours to help round out the game, it follows the plot of the movie very closely. Also keeping in touch with the movie, a lot of the humor that was in the movie was also carried over to this implementation of the story, but of course it was slightly more childish as the movie needed to appeal to both adults and children alike, while a parent who enjoyed the movie can safely let their child play this without supervision out of fear of corruption.
Gameplay:
As mentioned, there are eleven levels in Madagascar, and for an experienced gamer (or a very good child) this game should take less than 5 hours to complete. Within each level, you may play either one character, or in a couple levels you actually play as three or all four of the main characters in the game.
Because each animal is different, they each have different skills; for example Alex is a great jumper and can roar for his attack, Gloria is one fantastic sprinter and she can throw a mean hip check, Melman the lanky giraffe hovers and can use his long neck as leverage to throw Durian bombs (in one level) and use his head as a weapon, while Marty uses his equine background to kick baddies. One level does let you play as the humorous penguin crew, which presents a different set of challenges as they relied more on their stealth and fantastic kung-fu style to get around.
Levels range from the introduction level where you become accustomed to each of the playable characters in the New York Zoo, to the great escape level where the three friends try to speed their way to Grand Central Station to stop Marty from going to the wild. The Penguins only moment to shine is the level called Penguin Mutiny where they overthrow a cargo ship that the animals are trapped on, with the intent of making their way to the South Pole (to which they declared “This sucks” when they actually make it ).
A platformer wouldn’t be complete without a healthy dose of item collection now would it? Madagascar doesn’t let us down as throughout each level are 100 coins that are scattered that let you visit the Zoovenier shop to unlock items and levels within the game. Purchasable items range from a crown for Alex to three mini-games, an entertaining nine-hole mini-golf course, Shuffleboard (and extra boards to play on), and a DDR type button matching game to help get the fun loving Lemurs into a dancing frenzy. The mini-games are entertaining and do allow for multiple people to play by sharing the controller. I found the golf one the most enjoyable and I think that I’ll find myself popping this in once in a while to play the sometimes quite challenging holes.
Now for some of the issues that plagued the game. The worst offender would be the horrible camera that’s used. Sure, it’s easily moved by the player, but the speed with which it whips around the screen wouldn’t even make a three-toed sloth sick. I’ve seen some sluggish cameras in my years, but I found this to be one of the worst that I’ve seen. Not only is it slow, but it’s movement seemed counterintuitive to the direction I expected it to move. So I’d always find myself move it one direction, then once it starts moving have to adjust it to the other direction. Nasty.
One other thing that really isn’t that big of an issue, but I found it extremely irritating, and it only happened once in the entire game, but that one time was enough to sour me a little on the quality of the entire game. While playing as the monochromatic penguins, I came to a point where the little tuxedo wearing bird is explaining how to do something by pressing a button. Sure, not bad right…but he tells me to press the circle button, and the last time I looked at my Xbox controller I didn’t see a circle button on there, so obviously this audio artifact was left over from the PS2 version of the game, why it wasn’t removed is beyond me.
Graphics:
Graphically, Madagascar is a huge leap from the quality of the movie, and that’s most apparent in the opening scene where the movie and game are blended together. I’m not saying that the graphics for the characters are bad, because they are far from it, as they fit the style of the game perfectly.
However, one other large issue that I noticed was a large amount of fogging that was used to cover up the background. I thought the days of lazy programming were behind us, but I guess that in order to meet some deadlines, some shortcuts are required. It doesn’t detract from the game too much, but it’s still disappointing to see an outline of something in the far background, only to have it surface when it gets closer to you at this stage of the lifespan for this console.
Audio:
Overall the audio quality and voice acting was top notch here, even though the original cast were not featured in the game. Yes, that’s right…Chris Rock’s Marty is now played by someone else, but to be honest this guy nails the voice and I actually had to check the credits to be sure it wasn’t Rock.
Because it’s using in game Dolby Digital, the sound is quite sharp and when Alex lets out his mighty roar, the subwoofer does get some action. I really have nothing but good things to say about the audio (except for the one major slip-up I mentioned above).
Conclusion:
As a movie to game translation, and a children’s game at that, Madagascar is a very solid effort that will keep the younger set entertained for quite some time. Adults will not take long at all to work through this game, but will probably get a lot of enjoyment out of playing the mini-games with their child, or even by themselves for that matter.
For parents who’ve seen the movie, and their child is begging for more, the best bang for your buck (until the DVD release that is) is probably to pick this up to keep your young one busy on those rainy summer days when you’d rather not sit in a crowded movie theater. I recommend this to the gaming family.
Madagascar (both the movie and the game) follows the exploits of a crew of animals that live in a zoo in New York City; Marty the zebra, Alex the lion, Gloria the hippo, and Melman the giraffe. On Marty’s tenth birthday in the zoo he starts to develop a mid-life crisis, wondering exactly what his life means in the zoo. Staring at the mural that’s painted on the wall in front of his treadmill, and by a little prompting by the crafty penguins that are planning their escape to Antarctica Marty decides to plan a daring escape from the zoo, and make his way to “the wild”, either Connecticut or Kenya, it doesn’t matter.
The game opens with a shot taken directly from the movie, but sadly that’s the only actual movie footage that I saw in the four hours that it took me to complete the eleven levels of Madagascar, including spending a fair amount of time on a couple of the fun mini-games included. It’s too bad that they didn’t use more actual footage from the movie, and it would have fit very well into the game as aside from a few small detours to help round out the game, it follows the plot of the movie very closely. Also keeping in touch with the movie, a lot of the humor that was in the movie was also carried over to this implementation of the story, but of course it was slightly more childish as the movie needed to appeal to both adults and children alike, while a parent who enjoyed the movie can safely let their child play this without supervision out of fear of corruption.
Gameplay:
As mentioned, there are eleven levels in Madagascar, and for an experienced gamer (or a very good child) this game should take less than 5 hours to complete. Within each level, you may play either one character, or in a couple levels you actually play as three or all four of the main characters in the game.
Because each animal is different, they each have different skills; for example Alex is a great jumper and can roar for his attack, Gloria is one fantastic sprinter and she can throw a mean hip check, Melman the lanky giraffe hovers and can use his long neck as leverage to throw Durian bombs (in one level) and use his head as a weapon, while Marty uses his equine background to kick baddies. One level does let you play as the humorous penguin crew, which presents a different set of challenges as they relied more on their stealth and fantastic kung-fu style to get around.
Levels range from the introduction level where you become accustomed to each of the playable characters in the New York Zoo, to the great escape level where the three friends try to speed their way to Grand Central Station to stop Marty from going to the wild. The Penguins only moment to shine is the level called Penguin Mutiny where they overthrow a cargo ship that the animals are trapped on, with the intent of making their way to the South Pole (to which they declared “This sucks” when they actually make it ).
A platformer wouldn’t be complete without a healthy dose of item collection now would it? Madagascar doesn’t let us down as throughout each level are 100 coins that are scattered that let you visit the Zoovenier shop to unlock items and levels within the game. Purchasable items range from a crown for Alex to three mini-games, an entertaining nine-hole mini-golf course, Shuffleboard (and extra boards to play on), and a DDR type button matching game to help get the fun loving Lemurs into a dancing frenzy. The mini-games are entertaining and do allow for multiple people to play by sharing the controller. I found the golf one the most enjoyable and I think that I’ll find myself popping this in once in a while to play the sometimes quite challenging holes.
Now for some of the issues that plagued the game. The worst offender would be the horrible camera that’s used. Sure, it’s easily moved by the player, but the speed with which it whips around the screen wouldn’t even make a three-toed sloth sick. I’ve seen some sluggish cameras in my years, but I found this to be one of the worst that I’ve seen. Not only is it slow, but it’s movement seemed counterintuitive to the direction I expected it to move. So I’d always find myself move it one direction, then once it starts moving have to adjust it to the other direction. Nasty.
One other thing that really isn’t that big of an issue, but I found it extremely irritating, and it only happened once in the entire game, but that one time was enough to sour me a little on the quality of the entire game. While playing as the monochromatic penguins, I came to a point where the little tuxedo wearing bird is explaining how to do something by pressing a button. Sure, not bad right…but he tells me to press the circle button, and the last time I looked at my Xbox controller I didn’t see a circle button on there, so obviously this audio artifact was left over from the PS2 version of the game, why it wasn’t removed is beyond me.
Graphics:
Graphically, Madagascar is a huge leap from the quality of the movie, and that’s most apparent in the opening scene where the movie and game are blended together. I’m not saying that the graphics for the characters are bad, because they are far from it, as they fit the style of the game perfectly.
However, one other large issue that I noticed was a large amount of fogging that was used to cover up the background. I thought the days of lazy programming were behind us, but I guess that in order to meet some deadlines, some shortcuts are required. It doesn’t detract from the game too much, but it’s still disappointing to see an outline of something in the far background, only to have it surface when it gets closer to you at this stage of the lifespan for this console.
Audio:
Overall the audio quality and voice acting was top notch here, even though the original cast were not featured in the game. Yes, that’s right…Chris Rock’s Marty is now played by someone else, but to be honest this guy nails the voice and I actually had to check the credits to be sure it wasn’t Rock.
Because it’s using in game Dolby Digital, the sound is quite sharp and when Alex lets out his mighty roar, the subwoofer does get some action. I really have nothing but good things to say about the audio (except for the one major slip-up I mentioned above).
Conclusion:
As a movie to game translation, and a children’s game at that, Madagascar is a very solid effort that will keep the younger set entertained for quite some time. Adults will not take long at all to work through this game, but will probably get a lot of enjoyment out of playing the mini-games with their child, or even by themselves for that matter.
For parents who’ve seen the movie, and their child is begging for more, the best bang for your buck (until the DVD release that is) is probably to pick this up to keep your young one busy on those rainy summer days when you’d rather not sit in a crowded movie theater. I recommend this to the gaming family.