The biggest knock on the lack of creativity in this game is its
repetitive nature. In general, it gets plain boring slapping people
around with your sole robber. The exception is when you upgrade to the
Pumpkin King or Santa Jack. Once you upgrade to these you can spit a
little fire and throw some Christmas presents. Now if you could only
set the presents on fire and then throw them, that would be cool! My
wishes aside, when you are in the other Jack modes, the character is
much more fun to play, but not fun enough to make up for the drudgery
of being plain old Jack Skellington
In terms of Oogie Boogie and his minions, the game also is very weak in
creating an interesting nemesis. Consistent with the rest of the game,
the characters are fairly well developed in terms of style, however
they are really easy to beat. I do enjoy the rhythm-based battles that
take place with the bosses on each level. Once again this is
unfortunately overdone, and what once was a good idea gets old, real
quick.
My biggest critique on the game play is the fixed camera view. If this
game were created anywhere near the time the movie was released then I
would understand, however that was 12 years ago. In this day and age, a
moveable camera angle is just plain expected, particularly in an
adventure game. It just mystifies me as to why a game spawned from such
a visually and stylistic creation would not allow the player to “take
in” the landscape freely.
In conclusion, this game is long on style and short on substance. Those
of us who are Tim Burton fans should consider adding this to our
collections, simply for sentimental reasons and to enjoy the animation.
For those who aren’t fans or simply require an original and challenging
gaming experience, this game is not for you. At first glance, one may
tend to blame the lacking in these areas to the fact that this is an E
rated game. However, the fact that there are many E rated games out
there that are a blast for adults to play trumps this argument.
Whatever the reasoning it does not excuse the fact that this game does
not live up to the creativity of its name sake and certainly is not
what is expected of something with Mr. Burton’s name on it.
D-
A visually and auditorally stimulating game with unfortunately stagnant game play.
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