The Incredibles has without a doubt become one of Pixar’s most popular and successful films. So it comes as no surprise that the success of the original movie would lead to countless amounts of merchandise, more specifically video games. There have been a few known video games that have starred our favorite dysfunctional superhero family, but today will be looking at the 2004 Incredibles game that was released coinciding with the movie which was published by THQ and created by Heavy Iron Studios the same studio that made the original Spongebob Battle for Bikini Bottom game. Will this game capture the excitement of the movie? Or is this another licensed-based game that is doomed to be forgotten?
If you already know the story of the original movie, then most of the game follows most of the plot points that were established in the 2004 flick. However, this game does have a hard time fully committing feeling like your playing a game based on The Incredibles as this film decides to either skip scenes or add scenes that take away from the experience that the movie already gave you in a perfect package. I understand the studio did not want to spoil the movie that the game is based on, but I find that kinda ridiculous as I would expect all the story beats including the spoiler based ones would be present in the story of the game so it could be as faithful to the film as possible.
The gameplay is surprisingly challenging for a licensed-based game, but not quite in a fun way as I found myself wanting to rip my hair out during certain moments which left me no choice but to use cheats to get past some tough segments. Now don’t get me wrong, not everything in this game is hard as some platforming segments were a breeze to get past. The thing that infuriates me the most is how often you die from clunky movement control and how easy it is to lose health and even find health pick-me-ups which are rare to come across. The biggest example of this argument would be the Omnidriod battles which on paper sound like fun, but in execution, they are so tough to avoid. You can’t make your move to attack the dang thing because the Omnidriod moves around so much that you are not given enough of a chance to make your shot. Aside from those aspects, it is nice to play as the many members of The Incredibles family as you can punch as Mr. Incredible, stretch as Elastigirl and run fast as Dash. the only character I wish I could have gotten more creative gameplay out of is Violet as her sections are basic stealth with no attacking enemies which was very disappointing.
PS2 era games may not have aged the best graphics-wise, but to the credit of the developers of Heavy Iron, they did their very best to capture the style and tone of the movie. The character designs are in all honesty, okay and the background designs can be impressive from time to time. However, after a while, it gets a little old spending time on nomanisan island both outdoors and indoors as everything just starts to look the same without too much variation. The same can be said about the enemies as after a while they all seem to have similar modes of attack that were already shown from past enemies. I will give the game this though, the music is pretty dang similar to Michael Giacchino’s original score from the movie. True, they do rip some music out from the original movie, but there are still some original tracks that almost feel like you could hear this kind of music from the actual movie itself.
This was, unfortunately, a disappointment from Heavy Iron Studios as I know they can make great games based on licensed properties. This was unfortunately a mess of a game that doesn’t quite work as an adaptation of the 2004 classic animated film. However, there were still hints of what a good video game could be like, it just so happens that the clunky and too challenging gameplay plus the unwillingness to try and be more faithful to the story of the movie hurt this game in the long run. If you are curious to try this game out and you are a fan of the original movie, I’d say to still give it a shot if you are feeling optimistic. Just don’t expect it to give you the same amount of fun and excitement that you can already get from watching the movie instead.
(Final Grade: C+)