Flushed Away
Posted November 27, 2006
It has become standard over basically the entire life of the video game that when a major movie comes out, especially a popular children's movie; a game with its namesake will be out in time to capitalize on its popularity for virtually every console on the market. One of the most recent in this type of video game is Flushed Away based on the Dreamworks movie by the same name. Will it be a good title or just another in the long running tradition of E.T. The Game? The people at D3 Publishers hope they have a hit on their hands but all in all this game is just a clone of every other title in its genre.
Gameplay:
While I haven't seen the movie I have seen the previews and based on those a can assume that the game follows the movie as far as plotline is concerned. You start out as Roddy, a well to do pet mouse. Roddy's owner is going on holiday and Roddy has decided to venture out of his cage to find some crackers or brie. You immediately encounter a sewer rat named Sid who was playing poker or something and finds himself flushed down a pipe and ends up in your home. Wanting to get rid of Sid, Roddy invites him to take a relaxing dip in the hot tub which is really a toilet. Not being fooled by Roddy, Sid throws you into the toilet and flushes you. Meanwhile a thief mouse named Rita is trying to steal a Ruby to fund her trip to Europe. Once you have stolen the Ruby from an enemy character aptly named Toad he sends his henchmen after you and you must escape. In a bizarre plot twist that I have yet to figure out Roddy is all of a sudden thrown into the mix and Rita and Roddy make their attempted escape in a boat the the Jimmy Dodger, where you shoot some sort of balls out of a gun at the henchman who appear to be riding on mixers. You are ultimately caught by Toad at which point he throws Roddy and Rita into a freezer and you must pick a lock in order to escape which is mind numbingly simple using your stylus to push the lock pins up. Once you complete this task it becomes one of the games few completely horrible mini games. It only took me about ten seconds to complete during the game and it doesn't get any harder in the mini game.
Once you escape from Toad, Rita and Roddy make a deal to benefit them both. Roddy wants to get back to Kensington (Home) and Rita wants funding for her trip to Europe which Roddy agrees to provide her if she helps him get home. At this point the game takes a slight turn from the very short missions leading to cut scenes to more of a free roaming type game even though you are limited where you can go. You can choose to use Either Roddy or Rita to navigate different areas of the maps and complete different challenges. I could see right away the Rita is the better of the two characters since she uses a bungee cord as one of her attacks which also doubles as a type of swinging rope; Her other attack is just a kick. Roddy uses what looks like a plastic cocktail sword that you would use for either olives or cocktail onions in a martini, but his running attack with the sword will cause you to kill yourself more often than it will help.
Here are where the real problems with the game are apparent. All too often when you are exploring areas in Flushed Away enemies will come out of nowhere and hit you before you even realize they are there which becomes extremely frustrating but also jumping from one platform to the next will often lead to you jumping into the sewer water or nothingness which both lead to instant death. Also you spend your entire time playing the game collecting crackers which I honestly don't understand. What is the purpose of this? I haven't figured it out yet. Also you go from one stage to the next which all look the same for what seems like ever at times. It seems like you're going in circles but eventually you'll find an exit to another equally similar area and run around in circles there. I honestly don't understand the point of this game. If I don't immediately know what I'm supposed to be doing then how can we expect kids (the target audience) to understand it? The game seriously lacks direction and unfortunately completely lacks fun.
Graphics:
Flushed Away for the DS is just fine graphically with the exception of the afore mentioned enemies that seem to suddenly appear. The reason for this is because they appear to be fairly faint on the screen. No one is going to rave about the graphic presentation in Flushed away and they certainly could have spent more time figuring out a better way to utilize the bottom screen. 99% of the time its used only to display the name of the section of the game you're in. Some sort of a map or something would have been seriously beneficial.
Audio:
The audio presentation is just plain bad. The music is annoying and the effects are even worse. The bad guys, which it seemed there are only a total of like six, say the same things over and over. To make matters worse, and some times you see the same enemy up to twenty times within a minute. I often hear people saying that the sound of fingernails on a chalkboard is the most horrible sound in the world. To you people I present Flushed Away. It's a good thing the sound doesn't have any impact on the game at all so you can just turn it all the way down.
Conclusion:
If you absolutely love the movie then maybe this game is worth picking up once it reaches the $5 bin at your local Wal-Mart. Otherwise I simply cannot recommend this game to anyone; especially not little kids. The reason for this is they simply will not understand the game and they will not have fun playing it. The only recommendation I can make for Flushed Away for the DS is to skip it.
Gameplay:
While I haven't seen the movie I have seen the previews and based on those a can assume that the game follows the movie as far as plotline is concerned. You start out as Roddy, a well to do pet mouse. Roddy's owner is going on holiday and Roddy has decided to venture out of his cage to find some crackers or brie. You immediately encounter a sewer rat named Sid who was playing poker or something and finds himself flushed down a pipe and ends up in your home. Wanting to get rid of Sid, Roddy invites him to take a relaxing dip in the hot tub which is really a toilet. Not being fooled by Roddy, Sid throws you into the toilet and flushes you. Meanwhile a thief mouse named Rita is trying to steal a Ruby to fund her trip to Europe. Once you have stolen the Ruby from an enemy character aptly named Toad he sends his henchmen after you and you must escape. In a bizarre plot twist that I have yet to figure out Roddy is all of a sudden thrown into the mix and Rita and Roddy make their attempted escape in a boat the the Jimmy Dodger, where you shoot some sort of balls out of a gun at the henchman who appear to be riding on mixers. You are ultimately caught by Toad at which point he throws Roddy and Rita into a freezer and you must pick a lock in order to escape which is mind numbingly simple using your stylus to push the lock pins up. Once you complete this task it becomes one of the games few completely horrible mini games. It only took me about ten seconds to complete during the game and it doesn't get any harder in the mini game.
Once you escape from Toad, Rita and Roddy make a deal to benefit them both. Roddy wants to get back to Kensington (Home) and Rita wants funding for her trip to Europe which Roddy agrees to provide her if she helps him get home. At this point the game takes a slight turn from the very short missions leading to cut scenes to more of a free roaming type game even though you are limited where you can go. You can choose to use Either Roddy or Rita to navigate different areas of the maps and complete different challenges. I could see right away the Rita is the better of the two characters since she uses a bungee cord as one of her attacks which also doubles as a type of swinging rope; Her other attack is just a kick. Roddy uses what looks like a plastic cocktail sword that you would use for either olives or cocktail onions in a martini, but his running attack with the sword will cause you to kill yourself more often than it will help.
Here are where the real problems with the game are apparent. All too often when you are exploring areas in Flushed Away enemies will come out of nowhere and hit you before you even realize they are there which becomes extremely frustrating but also jumping from one platform to the next will often lead to you jumping into the sewer water or nothingness which both lead to instant death. Also you spend your entire time playing the game collecting crackers which I honestly don't understand. What is the purpose of this? I haven't figured it out yet. Also you go from one stage to the next which all look the same for what seems like ever at times. It seems like you're going in circles but eventually you'll find an exit to another equally similar area and run around in circles there. I honestly don't understand the point of this game. If I don't immediately know what I'm supposed to be doing then how can we expect kids (the target audience) to understand it? The game seriously lacks direction and unfortunately completely lacks fun.
Graphics:
Flushed Away for the DS is just fine graphically with the exception of the afore mentioned enemies that seem to suddenly appear. The reason for this is because they appear to be fairly faint on the screen. No one is going to rave about the graphic presentation in Flushed away and they certainly could have spent more time figuring out a better way to utilize the bottom screen. 99% of the time its used only to display the name of the section of the game you're in. Some sort of a map or something would have been seriously beneficial.
Audio:
The audio presentation is just plain bad. The music is annoying and the effects are even worse. The bad guys, which it seemed there are only a total of like six, say the same things over and over. To make matters worse, and some times you see the same enemy up to twenty times within a minute. I often hear people saying that the sound of fingernails on a chalkboard is the most horrible sound in the world. To you people I present Flushed Away. It's a good thing the sound doesn't have any impact on the game at all so you can just turn it all the way down.
Conclusion:
If you absolutely love the movie then maybe this game is worth picking up once it reaches the $5 bin at your local Wal-Mart. Otherwise I simply cannot recommend this game to anyone; especially not little kids. The reason for this is they simply will not understand the game and they will not have fun playing it. The only recommendation I can make for Flushed Away for the DS is to skip it.