| The Nightmare Before Christmas: Oogie's Revenge review |
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# It was a long time ago, longer now than it seems, that Capcom made a game that you’ve seen in your dreams… #
A year after releasing their PS2 licence of Tim Burton/Henry Selick’s spidery kiddie-goth meisterwerk in Japan (a country where, as evidenced by the masses of merchandise that have exploded into being yeeearrs after the film made only a middling impact in the West, the stock of the property remains supernaturally high), Capcom have seen fit to bring their wares to these shores. Oh, and to peddle them to those uppity colonials as well.
Expanding in fairly standard ludic grammar on the plot of the film, that no-account Oogie Boogie has sleazed his way back onto Halloween Town’s scene after being revived by minions Lock, Shock and Barrel, and it’s up to Jack Skellington to kick his buggy butt back down into that dayglo cellar where he rightfully deserves to skulk, muttering his Cab Calloway homages - so far, so generic.
Utilising the same basic mechanics (and presumably the same engine) as Capcom’s Onimusha series (with a bit of simplified Devil May Cry incongruously dumped in), Jack jumps, whips and, er, sings his way through various Gorey-esque locales as featured in the film, interrupted occasionally by a fairly standard boss battle, the only notable feature of which is the said sing-‘em-up element (after inflicting a certain amount of damage on a boss) where Jack warbles downright diabolical new lyrics over Danny Elfman’s existing compositions in aural attack. Anyone expecting rhythmic button-and-stick mashing on a par with SNK’s Cool Cool Toon will have their dreams ruthlessly flitzed – what could have been the game’s one truly imaginative feature amidst the film-licence mediocrity is only a brief and fairly simple press-button-when-onscreen-prompt-floats-over-target-box affair. Still, it breaks up the boss stages a bit.
The main body of the game is similarly tepid, gameplay-wise: utilising Jack’s Soul Robber - a whippy piece of Finkelsteinian gnarly green ectoplasm - the bony one battles his way through randomly spawning waves of depressingly unimaginative skeletal enemies, most of whom exhibit the same moronic side-step/advance attack patterns. Utilising the Soul Robber to send them flailing across the screen into their bony chums, one soon quails at the limited martial vocabulary (being a poor man’s whip from Onimusha 3 with extremely basic taunt/combo potential) and the clumsy way the player has to shift Jack around to describe any sort of projectile attack, the camera not being anyone's best friend here either. It also soon becomes apparent that Jack is twitchy and finicky when it comes to actually going where directed under duress, and he’ll often blunder into enemies or fall off ledges as a result (cue strident cries of “Oh, you bony twonk, no!”). As Jack advances deeper into the game, other forms (from the film) become available at the flick of a trigger – a flaming Pumpkin King with fireball belches and Sandy Claws, capable of mock-altruistically bombarding his foes with explodapating presentry. This transformative mechanic doesn’t really add much fun or true depth to the gameplay (apart from one boss encounter), although it does at least provide further fun nods to the film (and to Dante) and a teeny bit of variety.
In the game’s favour, the production values are pleasantly high, a cut above the normal identikit front-end fare of most licences, and Capcom have obviously made a reasonable effort (including enlisting original art director of the film, Deane Taylor and entrusting the project to Capcom old-timer Tatsuya Minami). Sadly, the constantly recycled tunes soon pall and aggravate (however big a fan of the film you are - why more instrumental cues couldn’t have been used rather than the same “This is Halloween!” chant ad infinitum is bowel-troubling); what Capcom have done, somewhat ill-advisedly, is stuff new, occasion-specific lyrics into Elfman’s songs, the sophomoric nature of which may result in external floppy tissues being withdrawn back into the safety of sheltering body cavities. The voice acting is great throughout, with several of the key players (Chris Sarandon, Ken Page, Paul Reubens) returning to their characters, but if you’re able to stomach Sarandon wailing “Soul Robber!” as you brandish said weapon for the twelvety-tenth time, you’re made of stern stuff. Graphically, this is a low-res, run-of-the-mill place, nice character models aside, and (to this reviewer’s eye - some people erroneously think he has two) little has been added, if at all, to the Xbox port’s bag of tricks over the PS2 original (no 16:9 support is offered, for example). Capcom have lapsed back into a nasty, lazy worldview with regards to the camera too, and frequently heads will be thrust violently against cathode ray tubes because of a sub-cretinously chosen fixed angle.
A vaguely solid effort, and strides ahead of most emetic licences, but still crushingly repetitive and disappointingly dull, considering the generally well-regarded imagination of the film. A clichéd and oft-mouthed caveat, but ardent fans of the film will be more tolerant of the game’s retroactive semi-laziness than Joseph Schmoe. Worth enduring a year’s worth of localisation delay for? Not particularly, but the game’s semi-budget price point (inevitably this will also wing its way into the bargain bin sooner rather than later) and, if you’re so inclined, the joy of anything Nightmare Before Crimbo-related (including a host of unlockable art etc.) make it a not completely unappealing purchase.
# This is Halloween, everybody make a scene, not an awful game if the mood is right. And it was bought cheeeaaaap. #
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System: Microsoft Xbox
Genre: Action
Developer: Capcom
Publisher: Capcom Europe
Players: 1
Version: European
Reviewed: Dec 2005
Writer: Bill Fuller
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Pros:
- It’s fun in short doses
- Small gothic people will feel its melancholy pain
- It’s all recognisably TNBC
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Cons:
- Derivative, boring, repetitive gameplay
- Drags on far too long
- Soundbites and looped music will drive nails into your brain
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The Nightmare Before Christmas: Oogie's Revenge Video: 5.5MB
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