Animation studio Pixar and development house THQ recently teamed up to release that lovable family of retired superheroes, The Incredibles, on the PlayStation 2 console.
The game begins with a short cut scene from the movie after which you begin playing as Mr Incredible trying to stop a bank heist. This quickly turns into action-packed fun as you punch and toss the bad guys from tall buildings, smash electric boxes, and hurl chairs and filing cabinets.
It would be safe to say that Mr Incredible is the brawn of the family.
As in the movie, each character has specific special powers. Elasticgirl can stretch and attack from a distance, Dash races around to avoid obstacles and Violet is involved in a stealth mission that utilises her powers of invisibility.
Unfortunately, you will spend the majority of the game playing as Mr Incredible. This is disappointing as he has the least variety in powers out of the four.
Each of the Incredibles` basic powers, like lifting heavy objects or stretching, can be used without limits. However, the special moves cost Incredipoints that can be replenished with yellow icons found throughout a level. There are also red icons that unlock secrets like an art gallery or pictures from the movie.
The graphics are great and there are times you will feel like you are in the movie. Unfortunately, sometimes the characters are not depicted entirely accurately, eg one scene shows the big blue eyes of Mr Incredible which he did not have in the movie.
Another criticism is the clumsy controls and camera angles. It becomes really annoying when trying to grab onto overhead objects when the camera positioning means you cannot target the object.
Also, whenever Mr Incredible throws a punch and misses, he is left defenceless on all sides. Since he is constantly surrounded by hordes of enemies, he ends up taking a lot of needless damage.
The game contains only a few phrases that quickly become very annoying. This is especially so when you play Dash trying to catch the school bus.
The game is broken into checkpoints, so even if you die in a level you will start at your last checkpoint. This is all well and good, but if you are on the last checkpoint and you need to save and restart again some other time, you will have to start from the beginning of the stage.
The Incredibles is an average game and I am not sure it is worth spending a couple hundred bucks on it without checking it out as a rental first.
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