Explosive Dud
Napoleon Dynamite arrives on the PSP not with a bang, but barely a whimper.
Published: January 15, 2008
I will give 7 Studios credit for handling their latest licensed game project on the PSP with a little grace; realizing the Napoleon Dynamite universe was best left undisturbed, they opted not to go with the usual standby of a platformer (or, even worse, the dreaded kart racer, though both genres are thankfully less of a go-to than they were in previous generations). Instead, they opted for a fittingly delivered world of duct taped and pushpinned cut-outs that serve as a backdrop to a handful of mini-games.
Yes, Napoleon Dynamite the game is a collection of mini-games, most of which are, frankly, boring mini-games. The ones that are good are milked and recycled to the point where they lose much of the initial fun they had. Fan of those Flash games that let you whack a penguin/school boy/whatever for what seems like thousands of feet? Cool, that's in here, as are basic archery/football variants to keep you happy. Like side-scrollers? Great, you'll get multiple chances to shoot at stuff without really caring why. Like rhythm action games? Great, you'll play the same one almost a half-dozen times before the end of the "story" in the game.
It's less of a story, really, and more a way to tie together nearly 30 little mini-games with a bunch of floating cut-out heads with embarrassingly ham-fisted dialogue that either tries to mimic the lines from the movie (and fails horribly) or actually inserts real lines (and again, usually fails due to the lines arriving well out of context). Tina, Napoleon's pet llama, escapes from her pen and thus follows Napoleon's slightly rewritten loosely movie-following tale of trying to get her back. You'll deal with Uncle Rico, defend Nessie when Japanese scientists try to blow her out of Loch Ness, and of course you'll dance. Oh how you'll dance.
It's not so much that the game never really approaches the source material with what feels like a solid grasp on what made the three-plus year old movie so endearing despite its characters just living out a borderline bizarre, quirky slice of Idaho life, it's that it tries, like many did after seeing the movie, to boil everything down to tired, burned-out catchphrases. Adding "Gosh!" to a line (or just plain getting the line wrong) doesn't really Napoleonize the inane banter between characters, it just makes them seem that much more forced.
I know, I know, I'm harping on a value-priced licensed mini-game collection for not sticking to the "artistic merits" of the movie, but between arriving years too late to really cash in on the hype of the movie and the way it all feels thrown together as a quick cash-in, I can't help but feel like fans of the movie (myself included) are going to feel gypped after just a few minutes. As it stands, the whole game can be finished in a few hours, at which point there's really nothing else to do.
It's arguable how much of that feeling is passed on by the cutout nature of all the visuals and the few looped lounge music sound-alike tunes. The jointed, flip-floppy sprites for the characters and slapdash feel of the cutscenes in the game certainly don't help things, but 7 Studios' artists at least tried to match the sketchy nature of some of the movie, and to be honest, it all kind of fits.
Unfortunately, fitting with a game that is both ill-timed and largely tedious doesn't really do it any favors. Even fans of the movie would be hard-pressed to find much value in the assemblage of mini-games on offer here. Are some of them fun? Sure, but for each of those, there's another three or so that drag it down. It's simply not worth digging through when many of the better parts of the game can be found in free Flash games. Even as a value-priced offering, Napoleon Dynamite: The Game lacks the infectious charm of the movie and instead sinks into familiar licensed game territory.
Yes, Napoleon Dynamite the game is a collection of mini-games, most of which are, frankly, boring mini-games. The ones that are good are milked and recycled to the point where they lose much of the initial fun they had. Fan of those Flash games that let you whack a penguin/school boy/whatever for what seems like thousands of feet? Cool, that's in here, as are basic archery/football variants to keep you happy. Like side-scrollers? Great, you'll get multiple chances to shoot at stuff without really caring why. Like rhythm action games? Great, you'll play the same one almost a half-dozen times before the end of the "story" in the game.
It's less of a story, really, and more a way to tie together nearly 30 little mini-games with a bunch of floating cut-out heads with embarrassingly ham-fisted dialogue that either tries to mimic the lines from the movie (and fails horribly) or actually inserts real lines (and again, usually fails due to the lines arriving well out of context). Tina, Napoleon's pet llama, escapes from her pen and thus follows Napoleon's slightly rewritten loosely movie-following tale of trying to get her back. You'll deal with Uncle Rico, defend Nessie when Japanese scientists try to blow her out of Loch Ness, and of course you'll dance. Oh how you'll dance.
It's not so much that the game never really approaches the source material with what feels like a solid grasp on what made the three-plus year old movie so endearing despite its characters just living out a borderline bizarre, quirky slice of Idaho life, it's that it tries, like many did after seeing the movie, to boil everything down to tired, burned-out catchphrases. Adding "Gosh!" to a line (or just plain getting the line wrong) doesn't really Napoleonize the inane banter between characters, it just makes them seem that much more forced.
I know, I know, I'm harping on a value-priced licensed mini-game collection for not sticking to the "artistic merits" of the movie, but between arriving years too late to really cash in on the hype of the movie and the way it all feels thrown together as a quick cash-in, I can't help but feel like fans of the movie (myself included) are going to feel gypped after just a few minutes. As it stands, the whole game can be finished in a few hours, at which point there's really nothing else to do.
It's arguable how much of that feeling is passed on by the cutout nature of all the visuals and the few looped lounge music sound-alike tunes. The jointed, flip-floppy sprites for the characters and slapdash feel of the cutscenes in the game certainly don't help things, but 7 Studios' artists at least tried to match the sketchy nature of some of the movie, and to be honest, it all kind of fits.
Unfortunately, fitting with a game that is both ill-timed and largely tedious doesn't really do it any favors. Even fans of the movie would be hard-pressed to find much value in the assemblage of mini-games on offer here. Are some of them fun? Sure, but for each of those, there's another three or so that drag it down. It's simply not worth digging through when many of the better parts of the game can be found in free Flash games. Even as a value-priced offering, Napoleon Dynamite: The Game lacks the infectious charm of the movie and instead sinks into familiar licensed game territory.