Gaming Trend

Gaming Trend Review

The Incredibles: Rise of the Underminer

1. Official Site
2. Platform: Xbox
3. Publisher: THQ
4. Developer: Heavy Iron Studios
5. Release Date: 11/01/05
6. Genre: Action/Adventure

by Mitch Youngblood

The Incredibles: Rise of the Underminer picks up exactly where the best movie of 2004 ended. The Incredibles swing into action against the dangerous machinations of The Underminer, a villain who calls to mind the Terminator as played by Stephen Tobolowsky. While Mr. Incredible’s family gets out of the way, he and Frozone must defend the city against The Underminer and his robotic forces. Their combined might may be just enough to fight back the forces of evil once more.

That’s the setup to another quickie THQ movie tie-in game and like the others (the Evil Dead series for instance) ROTU can easily be finished inside of an afternoon, complete with finding secrets and unlockable features. The game successfully captures the feeling of the movie, but once the action moves underground it dissolves into another very basic platform jumping game that throws in some action for good measure. Players can control either Mr. Incredible or Frozone during each mission and their respective talents of strength and freeze rays are routinely put to the test.

In case you’re wondering, the game moves underground almost immediately and there it stays for the duration. I kept hoping that the deeper our heroes went the closer they would come to unearthing a decent game, but unfortunately all they found was a passable way to kill an afternoon. On the plus side, ROTU gave me a reason to watch the movie again for inspiration which is always a plus.

Rise of the Underminer has some excellent level designs scattered throughout the game, but a lot of them appear to have very bland textures and limited color schemes. Oh sure, some might argue, the color brown should naturally be the primary color for a game set underground. How then to explain equally bland graphics whether our intrepid heroes are fighting across dirt, or ice, or large metallic structures? The result is a passable, yet frequently dull, visual experience.

The character design actually does have some personality to it because the various robot enemies are well conceived. I was impressed with the number of ways the designers worked drill bits into the models, but having more than one death animation would have helped add more personality to the game entire. Both the character models and the environments sometimes appear limited in design almost to the point where it’s easy to believe the developers were on a shoe-string budget, or extreme time constraints, or more likely both. Any way you look at Rise of the Underminer, you’re looking at a few shades of bland.

I actually enjoyed the banter between Mr. Incredible and Frozone which unfortunately was the only thing that came close to capturing the feel of the movie. Each character has a very limited amount of one-liners and they waste no time slinging them around five or six times a level. When they speak to one another about the danger they’re in, however, the game finds an acceptable level of funny. The only major name who returns to the game is John Ratzenberger who reprises his role as The Underminer. The man who gave us Cliff Clavin is flat-out funny, and remains a staple of all Pixar films. He makes comments as you scroll through the options menus that range from amusing to laugh-out-loud funny, and his appearances throughout the game are welcome.

The machinery sound effects are all well done, and equally well complimented by explosions and gunfire. Some of the effects, particularly the beam weapons and energy fields, give off a sound effect similar to what you might here in a 1950’s sci-fi movie which is where Pixar drew plenty of inspiration from for the movie.

The controls are perfect for a game like this. They are just sort of there. They don’t really help the player get through the game, nor do they truly hinder the experience. Gamers will use the D-pad almost as much as the thumbsticks because you toggle between characters by pushing up on the pad, you switch the AI to guard mode with the down button, switch it to follow mode with the right button, and set it to aggressive mode with the left button.

While controlling multiple characters via the D-Pad is not unusual, the way it was implemented in Rise of the Underminer struck me as tougher than normal during the heat of battle. Maybe I just worked it wrong but constantly hitting the up button during fights so that Frozone could setup an enemy robot then switch back to Mr. Incredible so he could finish the enemy off came across as remarkably poor planning. As for the rest of the controls, the A button is jump, the X button punches, the B button will shoot Frozone’s freeze ray or have Mr. Incredible pick something up and throw it, and the Y button is for environment interaction. Pulling both triggers at the same time will activate a super move which is usually a room clearer.

The Incredibles: Rise of the Underminer can be summed up in one word: uninspired. Thus far the toughest part of writing this review has been to come up with anything to say other than "meh" because one little three letter word sums up the entire experience of playing this game. I even stepped back and tried to look at this game through the eyes of a child, and I actually see them enjoying it less than I did. The end result is a review that has taken far longer to write than it should have for no other reason than the game left a zero of an impression on me.

Just in case that sounds self involved, let’s go through the basic game play mechanics. The player can toggle between Mr. Incredible and Frozone on the fly during each level and each character’s powers do compliment the other. But the game quickly (and by quickly I mean about 10 seconds into the first level) falls into the pattern of freeze-smash-repeat. This lets each character accumulate enough experience points to boost their respective skills, but then you’re left with two uber-lords destroying robot after robot for the rest of the game. Admittedly, this will only be about four more hours of play, but even knowing how short the game was I found myself nodding off out of boredom.

In between fights with nefarious machinery, Rise of the Underminer presents a standard array of platform challenges that really aren’t that challenging. Avoid gunfire while jumping on sinking platforms, using whichever superhero is required to complete an ability-specific task, and so on. It’s one thing to recycle clichés again and again, but if the game itself has enough personality and fun to stand apart from the rest then it is absolutely worth playing. Rise of the Underminer squanders its heritage by being neither unique nor having any resemblance of a personality. I think the worst part about it is that it’s just not fun.

There really is not a good reason for playing through Rise Of The Underminer a second time, let alone a third or fourth. The game by itself is not very good, is boring, and not all that challenging. Oh sure, completionists may find themselves excited to focus on one character at a time per run-through just to get a perfect score per level. But to what end, I ask? Long before the players reach the end game they should have come close to maxing out their characters to the point where the game is no longer challenging. While I can respect the Everyone +10 rating, the game simplifies everything so much so that the fun was phased right out during the development.

I’ve made known my unadulterated love for The Incredibles right here and that love is absolute. I was hugely disappointed to play through this uninspired continuation of a world I’m fascinated by, and it’s tough to find things to like even when stepping back to look at it from a child’s point of view. I like the idea of toggling between characters while on a mission, but the entire game feels like it was meant for just these two and literally no one else. If you don’t believe me when I say that Brad Bird created a world of immense depth check out the special features on the DVD, specifically the one that lists all of the super heroes and villains in the world. There is a huge amount of detail there that is completely ignored by this cash-in.

If only someone would take the time to craft a truly epic scale video game set in this universe. This is a world where superheroes and supervillains clash on a daily basis, where building-size robots routinely menace the good city folk, where laser beams and capes and derring-do are the norm. So why is it that with something this rich, some developers can only deliver something so generic as Rise of the Underminer?

Gaming Trend Score

66

1. Graphics: 77
2. Audio: 85
3. Controls: 75
4. Gameplay: 50
5. Value/Replay: 60
6. OVERALL:66