[insane_cobra]

DISCLAIMER: This game is NOT to be confused with The Incredibles: When Danger Calls, those are two different games!

Just finished playing The Incredibles yesterday evening and I felt the need to write a review. Well, it's more like I needed a way of venting my frustration. Cause you see, my fellow AGers, this could've been a great game, but they screwed it up big time.

Breaking the tradition of cheap Disney movie tie-ins aimed primarily at kids, The Incredibles is a full-fledged 3D platformer with very challenging gameplay. However, I doubt the high difficulty is something the developers (Heavy Iron Studios and Beenox Inc. - frankly, never heard of them) originally planned. Instead, it stems from some very dubious design decisions. But more on that later.

The plot closely follows that of the movie. You start as Mr. Incredible, a crime fighter of superhuman strength, on one of his daily missions against the forces of evil. However, what at first seems like yet another routine assigment, ends up as an encounter which will put the wheels of fate in motion. All cutscenes are taken directly from the movie which is both great, as they're fun to watch (although the sound volume becomes strangely low during the cutscene playback), and disappointing for those who were hoping for some original material. But great as it may be, the story is not really important here, as it mostly serves as a way of providing the levels with certain thematic consistency.

No, the real diamond (chipped, as it'll soon become obvious) of this game is its gameplay. Through the course of 18 levels you'll play as each of the four members of The Incredibles family. As every one of them has radically different capabilities, the levels will vary greatly in the ways they're played.

You'll play the most with Mr. Incredible, he relies on his super strength to mow through the waves of bad guys and punch his way through the enviroment. The fighting is relatively easy, although it does get a bit harder at later levels, mostly due to increased numbers of bad guys you'll have to fight at the same time. The fighting system is simple, but still allows for enough variation to keep the things interesting. You can punch, incredi-punch (a powerful attack that hits multiple enemies at once and depletes your super-energy, you restore it by collecting the special power-ups scattered throughout the levels; your health is restored in the same way) and grab most smaller objects, including the enemy soldiers, and hurl them back at your foes. Additionally, you can combine the punches with jumping and rolling on the ground which gives you a pretty wide array of moves. Everything is beautifully animated, the transitions are smooth and most of the level clutter is at least partially destroyable.

However, boss fights are an entirely different matter. Although the first boss and some semi-bosses are still pretty easy to beat, the ones you'll encounter later in the game require outmost concentration and superhuman reflexes. The boss enemies use adaptable attack patterns (they change depending on your proximity to the boss plus some other factors) and while most can be avoided, some attacks are almost certain to hit. To make things worse, it seems the game will use those attacks exactly when you're weakest, which in theory may create an illusion of intelligence, but in practice mostly feels like the game is cheating. Still, it would be endurable were it not for the first on my list of complains: the camera is plain awful.

Now, I've played a great deal of games with a bad camera (Silent Hills are first to come to mind), but this one outdoes almost every one of them. The problem is not in the lack of controls, on the contrary, with a bit of fumbling with the right stick, you can position the camera into most every position you may need. No, the problem is in the lack of automation - there isn't any. That's right, you have to control the camera yourself all the time. In practice that means you'll need three thumbs to successfully play the game (and I don't believe many of us can take advantage of such a commodity) or you'll have to play it with one finger pressing the position-the-camera-behind-my-back button every couple of seconds. I know this is not the only game with that problem, but why do developers still allow themselves such mistakes is beyond me. Granted, I didn't try to play the game with a keyboard/mouse combo so maybe that problem is not as evident there. Maybe console gamers are used to that type of control, I wouldn't know, but to me it was an incredible annoyance, pun most certainly intended.

Another problem is the design of some platforming levels. There's a distinct possibility that you'll spend some 10 to 15 minutes traversing a certain level section only to make a single poorly judged jump mere inches away from the next checkpoint and poof! - you're back at the beginning. Yes, Mr. Incredible will survive the fall, but you'll still have to replay that whole portion which is sometimes both time consuming and difficult. Suboptimal checkpoint placement is partly to blame, but I'll get to that later.

Speaking of platforming levels, Elastigirl, another playable character, is especially well suited for those. Like her name suggests, her arms and legs can extend to many times their natural length. You can imagine there'll be a lot of swinging around involved, and again, everything is gorgeously animated. What makes Elastigirl such a fun character to play is her ability to dispose of the enemies from afar, both by punching them with her long arms and grabbing them from a safe distance. It's not only fun, that way you can quickly dispose of the baddies and concentrate on the swinging puzzles. Her special move makes her spin around with her long arms hitting every enemy in close proximity which is a bit less useful cause most of the time you'll be able get rid of them while they're stil far away.

It's not all milk and honey, however. There are few enemies that remain unreachable until you swing over some chasms to get closer to them. They can still shoot at you, though, and one hit can easily send you spiralling into the abyss. It doesn't even have to be particulary deep, in some places it's enough to fall from any platform and you're dead. The ground can be just a few feet away, and you're a woman made of rubber, but if you fall, you respawn at the last checkpoint. Stupid, especially when you can see Elastigirl falling out of the plane and surviving in one of the cutscenes. Still, she's the most fun character to play and it comes as a disappointment that you'll control her in only three levels. [CONTINUES]

[insane_cobra]

Dash, a super-fast boy, gets only two levels, but in his case it's a relief there are no more of them. To make a long story short, they are H!A!R!D! His gameplay consists of getting from one end of the level to another before the time runs out. To achieve that, you'll have to use his special move which gives him a temporary boost, but at the same time rises his temperature. Once the temperature rises past the certain point, he falls over and you have to retry. Luckily, he automatically cools down when he's not using the boost and his temperature doesn't rise when he's running accross the water. In his second level you can even run along the walls or hanging down the ceiling.

Yet, there are problems. First of all, it's so damn fast, the controls are not the most responsive I've seen (at least with my gamepad) and inertia makes everything even harder. But that's all fine, what bugs me is another one of those "brilliant" design decisions. You see, you have to avoid the objects on your path, and while some of them just slow you down a little, hitting the most means instant failure. To make things worse, some of them are also moving and running into the surrounding scenery is equally as fatal. You'll be replaying some sections of these levels A LOT. Add to that the bad distribution of checkpoints and what you end up with is some very frustrating gameplay. Admittedly, I'm not a racing games champion, but I guess I'm fairly competent, yet I had to replay certain sections of Dash's second level for 372 times. You read that right.

Which brings us to another flaw, the save system. I understand The Incredibles is primarily a console game so the inability to save your progress in any moment would be somewhat acceptable. However, in this regard The Incredibles gives a completely new meaning to the words "a bad port". You're able to save your game in any moment, but when you load it (you have to quit your current game first - another annoyance), it brings you back to the beginning of the level. What's the point? It doesn't even bring you back to the latest checkpoint. No, once you quit your current game, the checkpoints are lost. Who came up with that system? Just like so many things in this game, it seems to be designed with a specific purpose of artificially prolonging the gameplay. Which, of course, is purely evil.

Now, I'm a bit puzzled by the ability to save your game whenever you want to, so maybe it's just that I'm missing something. But I don't think I am.

The last playable character is Violet, a girl who can turn invisible for a short period of time. Just like Dash, she has no fighting capabilities so the only level you get to play as her is an obligatory stealth level. You didn't really think any modern game could be without it, did you? Anyway, you have to squeeze past the guards without them noticing you, but if you get too close, they'll see you regardless of whether you're invisible or not. The level is rather short and not very engaging, it wouldn't even be worth the mention were it not for the fact that upon finishing it you get to play as both Dash and Violet at the same time. That level is one of the best in the whole game. With both characters surrounded by a spheric energy shield, you have to roll around the landscape flipping the switches and following the narrow paths without falling down. It's somewhat reminiscent of Monkey Ball games, although not as fun. Still, it's a very welcome break before the final, rather difficult, set of levels.

And that's not even all, when playing as Mr.Incredible you get to play a number of mini-games. The ones involving operating a gun turret are pretty hard, but I guess they'd be much easier to handle if I played with a mouse (though now I hear mouse controls are crap) or if I was better used to aiming with the right stick.

The taste this game leaves is very bitter, not because it's a bad game, but because it had the potential to be great. It's obviously not just a hack made to capitalize on a hit movie, the attention to detail is evident, everything looks very charming and there's enough variety to keep you from getting bored. It's a shame then that the developers failed at such fundamental tasks as programming a good camera or coming up with a fair save system. It was still a rewarding journey that kept me hungry for more all along the way, but I'll never forget the level of frustration I had to endure to get through it.

In the end, I think the words of Raveen Sharma, a guy who wrote one of the walkthrougs, sum it up perfectly: "Congratulations, you beat a difficult game. Not difficult in the way that it was a fair challenge, but in that the frustrating controls and poor design made it a chore to get through."

Couldn't expect anything better.

[Jackal]

Yep, I agree (almost) entirely. The camera/control combination was atrocious, and some of the later boss fights were damn near impossible for all the wrong reasons. Plus I absolutely LOATHE the habit of making you "beat" a boss three times before it finally stays down. That's just crap.

I actually liked Dash's levels, though. They were tough, but at least they seemed fair to me. Plus I started getting bored of Mr. I's repetitive levels, so welcomed the change.

[insane_cobra]

Originally Posted by Jackal

I actually liked Dash's levels, though. They were tough, but at least they seemed fair to me. Plus I started getting bored of Mr. I's repetitive levels, so welcomed the change.

You know, I liked all of them (except maybe for that Violet's level), it's only that some were so frustrating to play, Dash's levels in particular. There were some sections that I just buzzed through, passing 2 or 3 checkpoints at once, and that was actually a lot of fun. But then there were the Satan's spawn sections. *grinds teeth*.