For all of us Tim Burton fans, Buena Vista games has offered us a title
that takes off where the 1993 cult classic movie, The Nightmare Before
Christmas, left off. This offering, so ingenuously entitled
The
Nightmare Before Christmas: Oogie’s Revenge, starts simply enough with
Lock, Shock, and Barrel bringing Jack Skellington’s nemesis Oogie
Boogie back to life. Naturally, Oogie being evil and all, wants
revenge. This all takes place one year after the story of the movie
ends. You’re job as Jack Skellington, aka the Pumpkin King, is to stop
Oogie from completing his vengeful plan of overtaking Halloween town
and ultimately control of control of all of the holidays.
Prior to rejoining in the fight to stop Oogie, Jack has obtained a new
tool from Halloween town’s resident mad scientist, Dr. Finklestein.
This tool developed by the good Dr., who is quite obviously not an
M.D., is called the Soul Robber. This tool is definitely you best
friend in this game. You can use it like a whip or you can grab on to
ghouls and toss them around, for a bit. You can also use it to swing
around a little bit. Naturally, you can use it to suck souls out of
ghouls, here and there, hence the name Soul Robber.
The visuals in this game are true to the original movie. The characters
of this game are very well done and are just that, characters. They are
very detailed and at many times brought a chuckle, or oftentimes, a
devilish grin to my face. One of the joys of this game is the fact that
it has a mischievous side to it that is displayed in some of the
characters.
The landscape of the town is also nice and detailed and appropriately sets the scene for the ghoulish action that takes place.
Auditorilly speaking, this game is top notch. Being a music lover and
musician, I’m sometimes hard to please in this category. With that said
Nightmare, excells in this area. The songs are all either originals for
this game or from the movie and they’re all excellent. Again, that is
coming from a gamer who heavily prefers games that are backed by actual
rock bands, ala the Tony Hawk franchise.
The sound aspect of the game is even further strengthened by the
excellent voice over work in this movie. Even the lame moments are
delightfully lame. In this same vein, it’s evident that at times BVG is
going for the cheeky effect in its dialogue. This adds tremendously to
the enjoyment of the game, at least for those of us who appreciate such
humor.
Despite providing an excellent environment for a game to take place,
Nightmare falls very flat when it comes to the actual game play.
Although, Jack’s movements are very true to the original film, his
functionality is second rate. Take for example the heavy reliance on
the sole robber function. Although it sounds really cool, this weapon
is simply a whip for most part. Sure you can also use it to grab
enemies and suck their soles, as well as a few other tricks but
throughout the majority of the game, the sole robber is just a
whip. There are some combos to perform but they are not very
creative at all. Which is too bad considering this game has the
signature of one of the most creative moviemakers in recent memory.
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