Flushed Away
In Flushed Away you play as a suave mouse named Roddy and spend your days running around the house as if it were an obstacle course. Unfortunately your rich lifestyle gets turned upside down when a rat from the sewer (Sid) makes his way up the drain and into your kitchen. After a short interaction it's down the drain with you and viola you find yourself in a metropolis surrounded by green rivers of sewage. In this vile place you meet a girl mouse named Rita and find yourself on opposite sides of the fence with Toad. It would seem that he wants you to die while you in fact very much want to live.
The story in Flushed Away (the game anyway) never really gets too involved and doesn't break any new ground. It is charming though and enjoyable enough but with cut scenes designed for children in mind you can't expect anything too interesting. Like many games of this nature don't make any mistake; this release is strictly appealing to the kid who loved the movie. Nobody else will feel compelled to play it and therefore Flushed Away finds its happy life not quite in the sewer but it's not exactly in high society either.
Gameplay:
One thing that always gets me with games like this is the fact that they are essentially all the same. It's almost as if there is a singular tool out there for Game Design 101 and these developers borrow these elements and cut and paste them for their project. How many times must we be forced to endure plodding through 3D environments like it's 1997? Linear gameplay and an inherent lack of depth just don't cut the mustard in today's gaming environment. You need to have a fresh spin on things if you want to succeed but then a movie based game isn't generally out for success; it's out for some extra money.
Because of the finances backing a title like Flushed Away it's easy to see where things went wrong. The development team was undoubtedly pressed for time and given a limited budget or manpower to work with. Because of this nearly every aspect of the game suffers and one could say that this game is woefully unpolished from start to finish. That's a commonality found in the "genre" of movie-to-game crossovers and only a rare few break the mold. Make no mistake about it though; this isn't one of those rarities.
Sure the premise is cute enough for younger gamers. You're playing a charming and witty mouse in Honey We Shrunk the Kids kind of surroundings. As a seasoned gamer I too felt the endearing lure of this title though that temptress didn't hold my gaze for very long. Quite sooner than I expected I found myself getting bored out of my skull as I lollygagged about the environment jumping onto platforms and fighting villains off with my toothpick. The base gameplay is about as simple as you can get in this day and age of technology and that comparison I made to 1997 felt evermore true as I progressed through the game.
If you're going to make a game with archaic design you better at least do it better than those that came before you. Unfortunately for Flushed Away this isn't the case. The game never elevates beyond the "just average" line and it seems quite content to stay generic the entire way through. Navigational puzzles like spinning your toothpick to fly, double-jumping to reach that extra high platform and hanging onto a ledge is about as creative as it gets. Sure vehicles come into play later in the game but they really aren't that interesting or innovative.
To make matters worse is the fact that you can't really get to the game over screen. That means there is no challenge whatsoever and the game becomes a tiresome obstacle course of redundancy before long. Again, I understand that this is a kids game but what happened to challenging our youth? When I was a kid we never even heard of a difficulty level and if you wanted unlimited lives you needed a Game Genie. And yes, I also walked up hill both ways to school barefoot and in the snow.
Another tired children's concept is the ideal that if you give kids shiny things to collect they will be happy. This isn't necessarily the case, but Flushed Away tries anyways. Along your way through the game you'll pick up random junk, money, and gems. The gems are for health, the junk is mostly to sell, and the money, well, if I need to tell you what to do with that then maybe this game is for you.
At every turn Flushed Away simply proved how generic it was. The gameplay is tiresome after a few levels because every concept here has been a standard of the adventure genre for nearly ten years now. Collect-a-thon madness doesn't count as depth either and to make matters worse the camera will cause cheap hits and unnecessary restarts. I suppose if you know a kid who loved the movie they might get a kick out of this game, but that's about the only reason I could think of to play it.
Graphics:
The graphics in Flushed Away also don't do much for the title. Jagged, chunky, and downright bland, the look of the game is sub-par compared to its competitors. There is a fair amount of chipping and the level design could have definitely used some more work for the sheer sake of functionality. I suppose you could argue that the game does look like the movie but that's the only saving grace. The visuals here are comfortably average.
Audio:
The sound is another weak point for Flushed Away despite its upbeat personality and chipper attitude. The voiceovers are fairly decent enough but they are merely impersonations of the actors from the film. The soundtrack is moderately enjoyable with a few decent scores though the sound effects lack impact.
Conclusion:
If you haven't been able to tell by now; I was less than impressed with Flushed Away. The gameplay is generic to a fault and a lack of polish/depth really takes away most of the enjoyment that this title offered. There is indeed some charm here but the game just isn't worth plodding through to see it all. What's worse is the graphics and audio don't help matters too much either. In the end there just aren't enough reasons to check this one out. There are far better children's games on the market.