Shrek (video game)
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Somebody once told me this game was gonna bore me. It ain't the sharpest game in the franchise.
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Shrek is a 2001 platform game developed by Digital Illusions CE and published by TDK Mediactive. The game is based on the 2001 movie of the same name and was a launch title for the Xbox. A year later, it was ported to the Nintendo GameCube under the name Shrek Extra Large. A port for the PlayStation 2 was planned for 2003 but was canceled due to TDK Mediactive being acquired by Take-Two Interactive later that year, as a result of losing the rights for Shrek games.
Plot
Merlin (not to be confused with the Merlin from Shrek the Third) has captured Princess Fiona, so Shrek must rescue her by going on a quest.
Why It Deserves The Shape of an "L" on Its forehead
- Poor level design, as nearly every single area in the game, is an awkward mixture of open and linear with tons of invisible walls crowded all over the game, and it doesn't help that nearly all of the paths you take are extremely linear with boxed in lines and small places that it makes the game annoying to explore and it's made worse by the horrible controls mentioned below in pointer #3.
- Very simplistic puzzles, as they're usually way too easy to solve with zero challenge at all and can even be skipped rather easily if you speedrun the game itself.
- Bad controls. Despite being a big, lumbering ogre, Shrek moves fast, making him hard to control at times.
- Awful animation, with Shrek's victory dance being the most famous example, as he awkwardly waves his hands in a victory stance but it looks stupid due to how poorly animated Shrek is when doing his stance.
- Troublesome camera, with some areas having the camera getting locked in very easily, making some areas of the game rather annoying to deal with, and will only get used to it if they're experienced enough to play the game in its entirety.
- Boring and repetitive objectives, with most of them being "Help X to get Z back to their place to avoid Y", or "Fart X in the Face" (probably the stupidest objective in the game to date).
- Terrible collision detection, as Shrek can get very glitched when he's wall-jumping on the castle walls and cause the game to jitter at times, causing some Artificial Difficulty in places where you have to wall jump.
- While the graphics are pretty good, the game itself is a visual mess with the character models looking just downright ugly and gross at best, and the lighting being very off when compared to other early Xbox titles during its time.
- Inability to kill enemies. All you could do is knock them out (applies more to regular enemies and not ones important to the plot).
- Donkey, the series deuteragonist and one of the funniest characters is absent and has no mention in the game.
- The GameCube version also falsely advertises him on the box but he is still absent and not mentioned in the Game either.
- The T rating for this game is completely wrong because there is nothing in this game that would even deserve a T rating and should simply be rated E. Keep in mind the E10+ rating did not exist yet, so it was a side effect for the period.
- It has little-to-no relation to the movie whatsoever following a completely different story, and Shrek doesn't speak at all (outside of short grunts), and to add insult to injury, Lord Farquaad only appears in the "Enter Name" screen, despite being the main antagonist of the movie, instead being replaced by a generic villain called "Merlin" (unrelated to the character of the same name in Shrek the Third.) Plus, none of the cast from the movie reprise their roles.
- It's like the developers were making a completely different game with a gritty fairy tale theme but they saw the success of Shrek and got the license to use him and added Shrek characters at the last second. Makes you wonder if the game was supposed to be different.
- The final boss battle is a huge pain due to the need to use TNT barrels to blow up the doors to get to Merlin. This is very annoying due to the horrible controls and trying to throw the TNT towards him can be irritating since he moves very fast and Shrek's throwing arc is just abysmal, making the fight annoying to deal with.
- (Xbox version only) The game inexplicably returns you to the hub world after completing any objective, removing your progress on any other objective in the levels.
- (Xbox version only) A Time Trial mode called Race Mode is featured, where you must replay each level's objective within a time limit to obtain coins that can be used to buy cheats. However, most objectives give you barely enough time to complete them, making the mode hair-rippingly frustrating.
- The GameCube version seems to be the most glitchy and most poorly-constructed one:
- Is it hardly be considered a port since it has completely different levels from the Xbox version, making it feel more like a sequel than a port.
- It suffers from a choppy frame rate.
- Downgraded visuals. In this version, Shrek looks stupid and his model in Extra Large is very creepy.
- The game is extremely repetitive, as all of the overall mission structure often repeats itself with the same objectives with only 3 differences that feel too similar to each other and offer no challenge at all and some of them can get extremely frustrating at times too, especially the objectives with the enemies where you have to defeat them.
- Shrek's attacks are pathetically useless and have no power to them at all, mainly the fart which only stuns enemies and doesn't knock them out at all, and the other attacks like punching and kicking also don't work due to the bad animations and horrible controls making the enemies a pain to knock out since they already cannot die in the game, which is already bad enough in general, and the flame fart, while the best attack in the game, still isn't good enough to use to defend yourself from all the enemies in the game, which makes Shrek very problematic as an overall playable character.
- Bad voice acting, as all of the voice actors from the movie didn't return in this game and reprise their roles as them either, as they've been replaced by entirely new actors instead and all of them give out terrible performances that sound like they're completely under-acting at best, especially for the narrator and the Magic Mirror himself who is the only character from the movie that is fully voiced in this game and he sounds weaker than he did in the movie despite having a similar voice to his movie counterpart.
Qualities That Are An All-Star
- The Xbox version is one of the first games, if not the first game overall, to have deferred shading, which would later go on to be used in Grand Theft Auto IV and Battlefield 3, the latter of which was also developed by DICE, among other notable titles.
- Nice and catchy soundtrack.
- The game was mostly made to show off the Xbox's capabilities (hence the game being a launch title for the system), and it shows: that it has very good and detailed graphics for Xbox and GameCube standards.
- In the GameCube version, Shrek has a more appropriate running speed than in the Xbox version, where he moves very fast when you hold the analog stick diagonally.
- In addition, the GameCube version also fixes some of the questionable level design present in the Xbox version, particularly in the final boss level.
- The first Shrek game for home consoles.
- Fart and burp features can be funny for a bit.
- Race Mode is omitted from the GameCube version, and it is much easier to unlock the cheats (you just have to beat the game).
- By extension, the cheats you can unlock in both versions can be fun to mess around with.
- While breaking the level boundaries and landing in a level you can't escape without resetting can be annoying, in the GameCube version it's at least funny that the dungeon you land in resembles a GameCube. It's quite an accurate depiction of what the inside of a GameCube looks like.
Reception
Shrek received mostly negative reviews, with the Xbox version receiving a Metacritic score of 49 and the GameCube version having an even lower Metascore of 36. IGN rated the Xbox version 5.6/10 and the Gamecube 3.0/10. It was #4 on WatchMojo's Top 10 Bad Games By Good Developers.
Trivia
- In at least two levels, if you go beyond the game's invisible wall (usually by using cheats) and go a certain way you could fall and land in a dungeon you can't escape unless you reset the game. The Xbox version lands you in a generic dungeon, while the GameCube version puts you in a dungeon that resembles the inside of a GameCube.
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