Madagascar (video game)
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Madagascar is a 2005 platform game based on the movie of same name published by ActiVision.
Gameplay
Console/PC versions
The player controls the 4 main characters of the movie, those being Marty, Alex, Gloria and Melman (as well as one of the Penguins in King of New York and Penguin Mutiny). In some levels, the characters have to find 3 Power Cards to unlock an ability. In Jungle Banquet and Back to the Beach, it's possible to switch between characters through the use of a totem pole (although Alex is missing in the latter level due to his feral turn in "Coming of Age")
Handheld versions
The gameplay is mostly the same as the console versions, but instead of using the totem, the player can switch between characters whenever and new abilities are unlocked as the game progresses. Some stages also consist of timed minigames.
Plot
Marty is a zebra who lives in the Central Park Zoo on N.Y. with his friends Alex the Lion, Gloria the Hippo and Melman the Giraffe. in his 10th birthday, Marty starts to see his life as boring and wonders if living in the zoo is still worth it, but in that night, the penguin Skipper decides to escape the zoo and invites Marty to come along, which he accepts. Not long later, Alex, Gloria and Melman also escape out of worry for their missing friend. They eventually find Marty at the Great Central Station, only to be surrounded by policemen who shoot them with tranquilizers. Next thing they know, they are in crates aboard a ship taking them to a nature preserve in Kenya. Meanwhile, Skipper and his fellow penguins Private, Rico and Kowalski plan to take the ship to themselves and travel to Antarctica, but a hard turn by Rico causes the animals' crates to fall off the ship and get stranded in the island of Madagascar.
Good Qualities
Overall
- The voice acting is stellar. Even though most of the movie cast doesn't reprise their roles, the new voice actors manage to make very good impressions (especially Phil LaMarr as Marty, who sounds nearly identical to Chris Rock, and Wally Wingert, whose Alex voice is spot-on as well).
- Aside from Melman, the characters have some abilities on par with their real life counterparts' skills, like Alex's roar, Skipper's belly slide and Marty's kick.
- The enemies are well thought-out and fit the environment of the stage. For example, there are pigeons and dogs in the stages taking place in New York, wild animals like parrots and spiders in the jungle stages, electric eels in the stages with water that aren't beach-themed (like Save the Lemurs), and so on.
- Great OST by Michael Wandmacher (who would also compose the sountrack for Bloodborne) and Martin Schioeler. A few highlights include the songs in Final Battle, Alex's portion in King of New York, the theme for Wild World, and the stage completion and failure jingles.
Console/PC versions
- It has decent graphics for 2005 standards.
- The game has some funny self-aware dialogue, like in the cutscene where Marty is teaching how to jump, to which Alex responds "I think we're up to speed on jumping there, Evil Kenevil!"
- In King of New York, the player can find a number of balloons while playing as Marty, and if at least six of him are popped, he'll start talking with a funny, high-pitched voice.
- The levels feel like they are open world for the most part (especially the ones taking place in Madagascar), with a huge amount of space to move around.
- We get to meet more animals from the zoo, like Darnell the Elephant (who would be renamed as Burt in The Penguins of Madagascar), Reggie the Rhino and Ted the Polar Bear, who would also appear in The Madagascar Penguins in A Christmas Caper.
- In the 1st three levels, it's possible to play some arcade games, which are quite enjoyable.
- The levels have a lot of cool missions, like jumping through rings as Alex and traversing a couple of streets as Gloria a la Frogger.
- The Zoovenir Shop has plenty of nice upgrades, bonuses and extra content to buy. Some of those include pieces of "clothing" seen in the movie (eg.: Alex's index finger glove, Gloria's bikini and Melman's clock helmet and sanitary slippers), an increase for life capacity and some minigames.
- Speaking of minigames, they are great to play with friends and allow you to play as more characters that appear in the game, like Big Louie from Penguin Mutiny and Crocky the Albino Croc from Back to the Beach.
- Alex and Gloria have special power-ups dedicated to them, those being the Super-Roar Plant and the Pepper, respectively:
- As the name implies, the Super-Roar Plant increases Alex's roar power and range, despite only appearing in two levels;
- And the Pepper let Gloria run really fast and bust through certain obstacles at the expense of losing some control of her.
- Despite not having much of a personality aside from crushing on Gloria, Wilbur can be an entertaining character.
- It introduces some characters that would be interesting to see in the movie, especially the Zoohunter and King Foosa.
- Also, King Foosa is quite an intimidating villain with a cool bossfight.
Handheld versions
- Impressive graphics for the consoles, as well as nice-looking intro cutscenes that are actually animated, unlike most games for the GBA and DS.
- The DS version has a creative UI: when a stage allows to play as more than one character, the bottom screen shows the available characters inside the crates from the ship scene, and when one of them is being played as, his respective crate closes.
- The characters get some different abilities, like Melman's ability to disguise himself as a plant and Gloria's ability to swim.
- In the stage "Alex's Claws", Alex is actually capable of using his claws to scale walls and to attack enemies while roaring.
- The environments and dialogue are more faithful to the movie.
- The animation is pretty goofy and cartoony, on par with the likes of a Crash game.
Bad Qualities
Console/PC versions
- The characters are quite unexpressive, as their mouths only move when they talk and their eyes barely change in shape.
- In the PC version, their talking animation is also a bit stiff compared to the other SD versions.
- While Keith Ferguson did a decent job as King Julien, he sounds nothing he did in the film. Thankfully, this was fixed in the sequel game and onwards, where Danny Jacobs took his place.
- On a similar note, Mort is a bit smarter in this game due to his personality not being established yet, which can throw some players off.
- The scene in N.Y. Street Chase where Alex seemingly steps on Marty's poop is kinda gross.
- The human models in King of New York, N.Y. Street Chase and Penguin Mutiny are reused very often, making it really weird seeing two people who look exactly the same side by side.
- While Alex's mango throwing ability is a good idea, the aiming is sometimes kind of unprecise.
- The Super-Roar Plant is extremely underused, only appearing in Mysterious Jungle and Final Battle.
- The final section of Coming of Age can be frightening to some players due to Alex being in his feral state and at one point coming ou of nowhere to steal Mort from Melman.
Handheld versions
- The GBA version's sound quality is kinda inferior to the DS's. And yes, the DS is more potent, but still.
- Some audio bits were just recycled from the SD version, like Marty's and Melman's voice clips when they are selected and Alex's damage SFX.
- And for some reason, Marty sounds like a car alarm when he's hit at times.
Videos
Trivia
- Like Cars: The Video Game, this game came out 3 days before the movie.
Comments
- Good games
- Good media
- Games with a female protagonist
- Funny games
- 2000s games
- Game Boy Advance games
- Nintendo DS games
- Games with a male protagonist
- Games with a non-human protagonist
- Xbox (console) games
- PlayStation 2 games
- Nintendo GameCube games
- Decent games
- Platform games
- Adventure games
- Semi-open world games
- Action games
- Short length games
- Good games from bad companies
- Games made in the United States
- 3D Platform games
- Decent media