Recess' Lazy Anthology Films

It's no surprise that I hate the retro Disney Channel staple Recess. Let's be real, there're are and have been much better shows than Recess on Disney, many with unique premises that are remembered for more than nostalgia and many they get by through one way or another. Compared to them, Recess is like the AMC Pacer, it's iconic, but only for the time. It's something that was better seen when it was new, because through fresh eyes, it's disgusting. It has a borderline gritty palate, the character design and animations are reminiscent of an early-90s Nelvana production (see the first two seasons of Tales from the Cryptkeeper for a comparison) and the characters are one-note, as in all you could recognize them for is a single quirk. Even the mains aren't very compelling, annoying at worst. Not to mention, it gives a very hackneyed idea on what it was like to be a kid; it's hardly from the perspective of a kid, but rather what a P.R. Marketing Team perceives what a kid perceives. Watch any coming of age show and you'll get what I mean.

I could give an entirely opinionated critique on the show, but fuck it, I want to go for something a bit more objective, like the fact that Recess is a prime example of a series with lazy direct-to-video movies.

Recess had a full-length movie, for some reason, and next time you see someone complain about the lack of realism in the 2002 Hey Arnold! movie (heck they might make the same complaints against the Jungle Movie), show them Recess School's Out (and pay note to the tacky soundtrack). After that,  either the creators threw their hands up or Disney decided that this was going to be their primary cash cow (this started a bit before Kim Possible hit the scene).

Now, direct-to-video movies aren't necessarily renowned for their quality, so what makes these so bad. Three words. Glorified. Episode. Compilation. Essentially, they combine three episodes from the show and throw in some additional footage to make some kind of coherent story out of it. Sometimes the episode choices fit the narrative the movie's trying to go with, other times, the episodes mend poorly.

The Average Viewer circa 2001-2003: "Hmmm, I wonder, should I spend a few bucks just to get a compilation of three episodes? Fuck it I'll just go to the videos."

The worst thing about these is that the framework is barren, to the point that all you could do is summarize what happens in them; basically you'd just recognize what leads up to the framework and for the transitions it's just a fleeting mention of what happened.

As a testament, I want to quickly go over all three Recess D2V movies, namely give a casual impression because, heh, I haven't seen at least one of them.

Miracle on Third Street

The obligatory Christmas special. The faculty get stuck on the road due to bad weather and we get treated to four episodes (only one has anything to do with Christmas, the other is about Thanksgiving and the other two have no purpose because they have no holiday connections, they're mostly there to fill time)

The flow of the episode choices is disjointed at best, and it amounts to "this happened", "that happened", etc.. The worst part is that these are presented as flashbacks, which goes to show just how lazy the people behind this were (episodes are segued in from what the adults remember, and they show episodes with scenes where the adults aren't even present most of the time.).

Taking the Fifth Grade (impressions)

From what I've seen by the description, it just goes right to the episodes. Correct me if I'm wrong.

All Growed Down

This one is special, not only because I have more to talk about here, but the fact that this is not only an episode compilation, but it includes a new segment. Essentially, the main characters get held captive by kindergarteners (who're portrayed as a primitive tribe, this is either a piss easy allegory, or they were hurting for a proper portrayal). I give the film points for trying to make the episode placement make sense, since it occurred from the perspective of the kids, but that just leaves one big problem. This movie came out in 2003, and the episodes are much older. What does that mean? While the movie itself is set at a certain quality, the episodes are presented as they were when they aired, that means it's a pretty damn steep quality contrast, and it goes out of its way to show just how lazy these movies are.

The original segment is nothing to write home about other. In fact, it's the ultimate middle finger to continuity. One of the characters, Gus, recalls a time when he started a revolution that turned the kindergarteners into what they are today. Only problem is that Gus was the latest addition to the series, and the only explanation he offers is that they just forgot about him.

Closing

Some may say the show was bold for not being held down by continuity, I say the show was just lazy, and willingly ignored key elements they've established because they were desperate to make episodes that stick. The show at its core was lazy. The characters were lazy (designated to one niche, or overblowing one assignment doing little to make it look good), the episodes were lazy and relied on batshit insanity to give it any form of coherence, and these movies, holy shit were they lazy.

What am I missing?

(Old review) The "Growed" Special

Old review from around 2016.

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Part 1: All Growed Up

In 2001, the creators of Rugrats began to experiment with potential ideas for spinoffs for the main series. As the show went on, it introduced more characters and plot lines, and in a way, got a little stale over the years. If they didn’t come up with something new right away, the show would suffer a slow and painful death, or maybe it would just stay on and ostracize its fanbase in some ways a la Spongebob Squarepants and Fairly Odd Parents.

All Growed Up fancied the idea of the Rugrats characters entering a new milestone in their lives, and was the creators’ first attempt at coming up with something new for the series. It was the highest rated children’s special, at least according to Spongebob Squarepants. Two years after the special came out, it earned its own series and… it really wasn’t too good. But hey, it was a hell of a lot better than Preschool Daze. The show itself was generic as fuck, and it pretty much ate away at the characters’ likability. But that’s a story for another day, let’s look at the special that started it all.

(The Premise)

The episode starts with the babies watching a show involving time travel, then we get the obligatory Angelica comes in and fucks things up gag. This time, she has a karaoke machine and she proceeds to make everyone’s ears bleed (to be fair, she does get better when she gets older, both for her singing and her behavior). Some filler later, the babies attempt to play with the machine and Angelica attempts to stop them, forcing the babies to barricade themselves in the closet. With no other options, they use their imagination to travel to the future to, in their own words, become bigger and not put up with Angelica.

Alright, enough summarizing. They wind up in the future, where everyone including the babies have matured. Um… time travelers don’t age. At all. Enough said. We go through some generic teen tropes and don’t worry, once they get to the plot it doesn’t make any difference. Before that, I’m left wondering how characters like Lou and Spike could still be alive, and maintain the same traits they did years ago. Granted, a few years isn’t that far off, but Lou at least looks as if he hasn’t changed by much, save for Spike, but he looks as if he still has a long way to go. The main characters haven’t evolved by much in terms of personality, but Lil’s bitchiness and subtle pretentious attitude reaffirms my disfavor for the character. I’d explain more, but I’d risk making one of the longest blogposts on this site.

On to the plot (or lack thereof), the kids are anticipating a concert for teen star #513931E, aka Emica. Angelica (who has admittedly improved to a degree) claims that she’s going to the concert, and not only that, she’ll be wearing a medallion that’s similar to the one Emica’s wearing. Some fat cutting later, Angelica convinces Tommy to retrieve the medallion for her, because Stu Pickles conveniently has the same one, but it’s his good luck charm and he just so happens to need it for an upcoming dance contest, oh the drama! Tommy follows through with the deal, on the condition that Angelica helps Chuckie get with a girl he’s fawning over. Yeah, there’s a very minor subplot in this, but since it’s minor, it only needs a very small mention because it’s hardly that significant to the plot that makes up the size of a dime.

Tommy makes a fake medallion using a dog biscuit and he swaps it with Stu’s medallion. To be fair, it’s kinda explained why Tommy’s switching the medallions, but…

1: Angelica only needs to borrow the medallion for one night, and even if her friend finds out that it’s fake, by then she would have likely gotten away with it.

2: This only exists to elicit more unneeded drama to keep the plot going.

Naturally, Spike eats the fake medallion, Tommy gets singled out for switching both and losing the real one and Tommy’s punished for it, but before that, we get some melodrama in regards to Didi tearfully grounding him to the point that Degrasi and Moody’s Point collectively groan.

At this point, you’ve noticed that Tommy and Angelica are the main forces in this special, Chuckie’s doing his own thing in his very minimal subplot, Phil and Lill and Kimi are essentially just there, and Dil has yet to receive his very own personality and attributes. Question is, when will Susie make an appearance? Surely enough, when Lou is unable to stay home to watch Tommy, Didi hires Susie to babysit him. To be fair, this is before she was made into a grating character that breaks out into song whenever the situation requires it, but at the same time, there’s nothing more to say about here here.

More fat trimming later, the gang finds the real medallion and they attempt to sneak out of the house, only to get caught by Susie who just so happens to know what they’re up to, and to think people harp on Chloe Carmichael for being a Mary-Su (the ability to do anything runs in the family I guess). She lets them go on the condition that she goes with them. At this point it’s just some random filler, so I’ll just summarize the interesting bits through the power of bullets:

• Angelica is forced to admit she lied about having a medallion of her own.
• Tommy gets the medallion back to Stu.
• Lou just so happens to have an extra ticket for Angelica after she admits to not getting one.

At the concert, Tommy and Angelica get called up to the stage to join in on one of Emica’s songs. The song itself sounds like something you’d hear on the radio right now, but Emica has nothing on the likes of Third Eye Blind, Nickelback, Creed, 3 Doors Down, Matchbox Twenty, Vertical Horizon, Puddle of Mudd, Staind, 98 Degrees, Chevelle, Incubus, and just about any other band popular in 2001, related or not.

Intercut with the performance is flashbacks to earlier episodes of the series. This would work fine if this served as a finale to the series. The gang is all grown up and their past adventures are nothing more than pleasant memories that many will continue to hold for many years to come. But no, the series was still going until around 2004, and the performance is ruined by Tommy and Angelica arguing over fronting the song. The premise concludes as the Rugrats return to their main continuity, and we pretty much get what we got in the beginning.

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And that was… something? The plot was paper thin and non existent at times, the characters were lifeless and some were pushed aside almost entirely, there was too much melodrama in the scenes that embody it the most and overall, it just wasn’t painfully significant. If you want a good teen drama from the people behind Rugrats, As Told by Ginger was still going at the time. I may never know the appeal of All Grown Up, but I stand by my views. This is Channeleven and u-

*a note falls from the sky*

“This isn’t enough to make up for your absence. Stretch a little.”

Ok, were there any other specials where the characters get older or maybe younger? Let’s see here… Recess: All Growed Down? A double threat if I ever saw one. A plot similar to All Growed Up and it’s based on the show who’s movie I shat upon without reason. Sign me and my overly spread out user base up!

Part 2: Recess: All Growed Down

In 2003, Paul Germain said this to Joe Ansolabehere.

Paul: “Hey, Joe, you know that Rugrats special that came out in 2001?”

Joe: “Yeah?”

Paul: “Let’s take it, reverse it, and release it straight to DVD.”

Joe: “Well, we’ve borrowed a shit ton of assets from Hey Arnold, let’s fucking do it!”

After the first movie was release, it marked a turning point in the series. Three direct to video movies came out over the years with the same formula. A few minutes of new animation, mixed with full episodes that somehow tie in with the plot of said movie. What makes All Growed Down so special? Aside from the suspiciously familiar title, and it coming out two years after All Growed Up appeared on television, and said special being worked on by one third of the creators of Rugrats who just so happened to be one of two creators of Recess, it seems as if this is them declaring creative bankruptcy. What else is new? This won’t be long, so I’ll just summarize here.

• The kids get kidnapped by kindergartners (who’re portrayed as a primitive tribe for some reason, really flowing those creative juices) due to a leadership change, and the kids attempt to convince them to free them through the power of flashbacks.
• The flashbacks do nothing more than clash with the animation in the movie. The new animation looks clean, but when mixed with the outright gaudy appearance in the older episodes, it just looks disorienting.
• The only time a flashback occurs that isn’t just a replay of an older episode defies all continuity. Gus recalls a period where he attended 3rd Street School in kindergarten, even though it was established in an older episode that he came when he was his established age. It serves as a Gary-Stu power trip where he made it a standard for kindergartners to act like savage monsters. People like this again because?
• It ends with the kindergartners turning against their new leader and the main kids getting freed, with an extra middle finger to what should’ve been well structured continuity given when it was hinted that Gus’ power trip actually happened.

What could be said about All Growed Down, and just about any Recess movie after School’s Out? Cash in, plain and simple. It’s a shame really, given that Disney maintained a spotless track record (especially after the Dark Ages). I’d have to ask, what was the appeal of Recess, and why couldn’t we turn to Hey Arnold or Pepper Ann to see that particular appeal?

This is Channeleven, and until we meet again, good day.

Atlantis Squarepantis Game review

Atlantis Squarepantis, aka a relic of many screechfests from the early 2010s, aka one of many older reviews purged by MoBrosStudios due to it no longer being up to his standards, needs no thorough introduction. Just know that it came, stayed on the internet as many internet critics ripped it up, helped lay the groundwork for an ongoing hate campaign toward a certain loose screw and had a tie-in video game, which I happened to own, I mean I still do but for better or worse I don't have a Wii anymore.

(FYI, I'm doing the Wii version.)

Background

Released on October of 2017, this game actually predates the movie it's based on by about a month. It was developed by Blitz Games, who was also behind Creature from the Krusty Krab. Within their lifespan, they made games you've certainly played at some point, the Fairly Odd Parents games come to mind, they also did Frogger 2; an objectively better game than Frogger: The Great Quest and a series of games for Burger King, don't know how that happened but it did, and that's just a small sampling.

Don't know how or when I got this, but I got it, I played it, and now I'm going to talk about it.

Premise

In spite of this technically predating the movie release-wise, the premise here is in line with the movie. SpongeBob discovers half of an ancient amulet, unites it with another half at the museum, which his friends are present at, they go to Atlantis, Plankton is shoehorned in, and no matter what you say, no indications, at least logical ones could circumvent a forced inclusion, shit gets fucked, SpongeBob and co. are saved by a cheap payoff when Plankton runs into it and that covers the film. I have no intent of going back to it, so I'm just gonna recount what I know off the top of my head. Essentially the film is like a watered-down version of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, where five guests arrive to tour an elusive area, one member at a time disappears due to certain circumstances and in hindsight that was a bit of a weak comparison.

The game starts off with a flashback, where SpongeBob and co. encounter Plankton in Atlantis, then it follows the aforementioned plot to a tee, and it lacks musical numbers, plus David Bowie, but for all I know he was tacked on to the film. It's weird, but the way the game delivers the plot is slightly less... weird than the movie. It's certainly a lot more straightforward, and lacking in musical numbers.

Gameplay

It's basically a series of mini games that tie in with the plot of the movie. Some levels share the same aesthetic as others. Basically, there're four different types of games spanning each level, driving, platforming, combo mashing and shooting. We'll get to these in a while. For completing each level, you get a medal, one of three, depending on how well you do in the level. These medals aren't for decoration though, they count as currency, currency you put toward buying extras in the game, but we'll get to those in time.

As you go on you'll also unlock extra parts of completed levels, whether they be ramped up challenges, quick challenges or just a retread of the original level to mask creative bankruptcy. I'll admit, I like how Blitz tried to incorporate replay value in this game, but given that there're 14 levels in total, I think it was in vein. On the other hand, most of these are retreads so I guess these bonuses exist as compensation.

Or better yet, this is how they were able to get the game on the shelves before the special it was based on came out.

So what're the actual levels like?

Tank Levels

There're two in total, and this is the first type of level you play. It's a personal peeve, but when you start, it's not immediately made clear that you need to hold the Wii controller horizontally. Surprisingly I beat this level without that knowledge. You have to blast your way across Atlantis while fending off enemy soldiers. While this game establishes that the tank shoots ice cream, it's still treated like a twist toward the end. That's one advantage the movie has over the game since we had no idea about the tank's means of ammunition, then again this was supposedly spoiled in the commercials.

Overall, it's an interesting way to start, though it's also fairly jarring. First impressions are everything, and this really took me for a ride.

Discount DDR

These are the most common throughout the game, and it's another tell that this game was produced rather quickly. Key commands fly by and you have to hit them at the right time. Miss enough times and you fail the level. These are as simple as running animation with key commands programed if one does nothing. Oh but sometimes the commands are obscured before they hit the center of the screen. Not impressed, and the only thing making these hard is human error.

Shooting

Admittedly better than the previous one due to the action aspect. There're two variants of the shooting levels, with two others differing considerably, I'll get to those in the next paragraph. For one of the former two, it's down to shooting everything while avoiding two hazardous items. The next is essentially an on-rails shooter, but strangely it's one of the more enjoyable levels.

Now for the latter two, picture taking levels. These are my personal favorite levels. It's an on-rails level where you need to take pictures of certain things while avoiding guards who if they catch you, they'll berate you so bad you'll lose ten points. You could also throw crabby patties at guards and take their pictures for some extra points. This is fun for what you're supposed to do, and what you can do. If you hit certain things, stuff will happen.

Driving

This could be considered a variant of the tank levels. Only one of these are present, and I personally consider this to be the one level I always went back to. Since it's the only driving stage of this nature, I'll go into better detail. You are essentially tasked with finding parts to the song-powered magic bus, and for every major power up your bus gets a new ability, for example, the wings allow you to jump, okay this is the only significant power up, the only other one is essentially a constant speed boost.

Guess I'm just a sucker for driving stages, and running into shit.

Platforming

These are sparse, but make up for that by being the longest stages in the game. It relies heavily on buddy dynamics, sometimes going on your own won't be enough. To start, you're with SpongeBob and Patrick. SpongeBob has the ability to flip open gates and move certain rocks out of the way. Patrick is able to toss SpongeBob to the other side of a pitfall and be pulled with him; an anchor would be used as a substitute if you're separated from SpongeBob.

As you go on, you'll deal with additional character combos, extending to Sandy, Squidward and Mr. Krabs. Sandy has the ability to lasso her comrades to whatever side she's on, as well as pulling open bridges, Squidward can run on moving conveyor belts and get certain gates open by running on a treadmill, and Mr. Krabs could launch himself over long distances so long as a pile of treasure is in his path.

Conclusion

Instinctively, this game should end with a reprise of the tank level, perhaps follow up with a final boss fight. Truth or Square did that in the game adaptation, but Blitz seemed to care more about being faithful to the source material. So the tank level is the second to last level in the game. What does this game end with? A credit sequence during the final level, which is another Discount DDR. I want my money back.

Graphics

The graphics are unique, in that they vary in quality and frame rate. Some levels run smoothly and have a simple graphical palate, while others, less common, are muggy looking and are a bit choppy. Those latter kinds of levels remind me of Creature from the Krusty Krab, almost as if part of the game was built from the graphical engine in that game, while the remainder was built from scratch. Something tells me they hired a second team when they felt they couldn't finish the game before the deadline.

Overall though, it's not horrible by Wii and PS2 standards, if this made it to the XBOX 360 and PS3 then I'd complain. Ironically, this looks better than those Activision published SpongeBob games. Well, as long as you don't compare cutscenes because those look worse in this game, I think this game has the worst looking cutscenes in any SpongeBob game.

Music

The music in this game is okay. It's not as memorable as past SpongeBob games, but they do fit the levels. Going back to those later SpongeBob games, at least they attempted to use new music rather than stock tracks.

Overall

The game isn't as fondly remembered as other SpongeBob games, at best they consider the game to be mediocre, and honestly it's a fitting consensus. The game is fine, though I could imagine people getting bored with it before long.

Pac Man World 2 review

I'm just gonna be honest, this was the only Pac Man World game I ever played. I never had a PlayStation, and I had no interest, let alone the knowledge on the later titles, and for better or worse, I never played the Game Boy Advance adaptations. Naturally I'm the best candidate to do a review on a game in the series while giving a cliff-note take on the franchise itself.

Pac-History

Pac Man is a simple arcade game. No matter the version, it kept its core structure, gobble up the dots and the occasional power pellet and repeat until you die enough times. Over the years, more games were introduced and attempted to try new things to spice the series up. Ms. Pac Man, beyond a gender-swapped character headlining, had a color-swapped maze and moving fruits (obviously they were stationary in the original Pac-Man.), Pac & Pal had a female ghost take items from around the maze, though ironically this helps you clear the level (minus whatever points you would've received of course), Pac Man Jr. utilized a much wider board and Baby Pac Man had a pinball section which when played, affects what turns up in the maze portion, and Pac Mania gave you the ability to jump, had more ghosts and a 3D motif, and that's just going by the arcade versions.

The console games are, relatively, a different story. They abandoned the maze motif almost flat out, almost as if straight-up Pac Man games were tainted by a certain company way back when. Some were pretty cool, Pac Attack especially, but trust me, duds exist, I'm looking at you Pac Man 2: The New Adventures, with your mildly intuitive point and click nature, it's amazing how this had the audacity to declare itself a sequel, like this was the direction Namco wanted to go, and yes, Namco developed and published the game wholesale. There was also Pac in Time, which I never heard of but discovered that it was a re-skin of an older title by its developer Kalisto.

In 1999, to coincide with the 20th Anniversary of our beloved ghost gobbler, Namco went for their most ambitious Pac Man game yet. Within the late-90s where many game characters were making the leap to 3D, starting with Mario in 96' (along with Bubsy but who gives a shit), Sonic in 98' (by official standards, Sonic Jam was first but that was just a selection aesthetic with small mini games as part of a compilation), and Pac-Man thew its hat into the ring as well, and well, people loved it. It was essentially an expansion on what was established in Pac-Man, keeping it within the sensibilities of 3D games, gotta have story and whatever else was mandatory at the time.

The first went over well, so a sequel was inevitable. After a number of compilations and otherwise forgettable titles, we got Pac Man World 2 in 2002. The game sold well, becoming players choice titles for the GameCube, XBOX and PlayStation 2. I bring this up because I actually owned the Player's Choice copy of Pac Man World 2. To get you up to speed, that copy gave you this game, as well as a co-op version of Pac-Man, Pac-Man Vs. (to sum up, you need a Game Boy Advance link cable, it seemed like it would be possible to just play with four players, but I guess they just saw an opportunity and went for it.)

Premise

During a sleepy night in Pac-Village, our classic rogues gallery of ghosts, Blinky, Pinky, Inky and Clyde venture around seeking to cause mischief. They discover a tree in the middle of the village, bearing five golden fruits, and they take them. Rather than just run away with them knowing full well their primary enemy is in the area, they just play around with the fruits. This exists to establish our true villain, a Medieval ghost named Spooky.

Pac-Man catches onto this after receiving info. from Professor Pac and sets out to reclaim the fruit and trap Spooky to prevent him from unleashing hell on all of Pac Land.

Gameplay

It's a 3D explorative game. It's your job to make it to the end of the level while contending with any obstacles and enemies along the way. A standard for any 3D game, but, they found a way to make it interesting. There're items you need to collect, okay they're not mandatory, but they have a psychological hold. You see them and you want to get them, and my god there're so many. Among these, there're pac-dots which typically help show you the way. Occasionally, they're hidden in crates for the record. You could also collect fruit, among the variety are cherries, strawberries, oranges, apples and melons, some are easy to spot while others require a little problem solving or simply a proper jump angle.

Next there're tokens scattered throughout each level, these tend to be harder to find. While some are easy to point out, some are in obscure areas, are unveiled when you kill certain enemies or are in places that if you're not careful, you'll die trying to get it, and believe it or not but these tokens serve a purpose. In Pac-Village, the tokens unlock games in the arcade (they have the original Pac-Man, Pac-Mania, Ms. Pac-Man and Pac Attack, plus a jukebox where you could play any song from any level.) and all are locked behind token walls. The tokens are also put toward repairing a museum, which we'll get to in a while. Finally, you get Galaxians, and these are pretty damn cool. They could be found in relatively obscure areas or once you defeat a certain enemy. When you get one, you'll be transported to a classic Pac-Man like maze. You have to complete the maze to get the galaxian at the end, and completed mazes will be made available at the arcade, provided you have a hard time getting enough tokens for the other Pac-Man games.

Onto the game, Pac-Man has three abilities, two of which have previously appeared in Pac Man World, the butt-bounce, aka your obligatory ground point and the Rev-Roll, aka a dash attack. This game throws in a jump kick as well, which thankfully there're plenty of opportunities to use it. Of your enemies, you get to deal with ghosts, with power pellets littered around for your convenience. You also encounter bears, rams, bats, spiders, I'm going by general names for anyone who may not be familiar with the game's terminology. We also get cameos from Pookas, of Dig Dug, who for the record also appeared in the first Pac-Man World.

The game has you travel through six different areas, each housing three areas and a boss, the forest, the treetops, the mountains, a volcano, the ocean and Ghost World. Fortunately, these levels are discussed in detail, and I mean thorough detail, on the Pac-Man wiki, with which going there is ideal for refreshers.

The Forest

The forest primarily exists to help you come to grips with your abilities and clue you in on what you'll encounter through the rest of the game. You start out with a level detailing your basic abilities and giving you opportunities to perform them. Next you encounter one of the more endearing headaches of platforming, pitfalls. Yes we need a challenge, I get that. Given the previous level, it's like going from coffee with creamer to straight-up black. Anyway after that, you go through what amounts to a relatively filler-type area. It's mostly about hiking around the cliffside and finding your way up to a higher platform by activating a number of pac-dot trails. The highlight of this is learning how to stop in the middle of your rev roll move. Admittedly, this is crucial given the platforming aspect.

It all concludes with a boss fight. You encounter one of each ghost every four levels. They typically commander giant ghost-shaped robots, but Clyde, or Blinky as this game likes to call him, is different, he don't need no mechanical ghost, he's goin' in with a giant frog, probably because it's, ironically, one of the easier boss battles, first boss. To do this, you just have to butt-bounce on its tongue when it does an attack, pay no mind to the swaying motions, you could still easily land your mark. Then you have to rev roll into the frog's mouth to knock out its main power source. Do that and you'll be rewarded with the golden cherry.

The Treetops

The challenge gradually increases from this point. We get more platforming, more enemies and a trampoline mechanic that only sparsely appears after this part of the map. You start off with an introduction to the first level's gimmick, trampolines you activate by butt bouncing on them. The red and white ones have a short range, while the blue ones give you a higher jump and the ramp-shaped ones send you to a much farther area. This particular level concludes with a section mirroring the Pac-Man maze, though ironically you'll find a galaxian in this level. The next level introduces saws as platform hazards, with the challenge increasing because there's fruit you could collect. Then you get another hazard, fire floors which kill you instantly, but around the second half they become less common. Apparently these woods were victim to the Treetop Cutting Industry, it going down a decade prior to Pac-Man visiting it.

Inky's the next ghost you encounter. Just rev roll into him a couple of times while dodging his saw blade attacks. You'll get a golden strawberry for your troubles. Personally I consider this area my favorite out of the others, there's something about the dark woods that really resonates with me for some reason.

The Mountains

The difficulty hike continues as you venture atop and throughout the snowy mountains. Here you encounter rev roll rams. Just give them a taste of their own medicine and you'll be fine. For collectibles, it's a matter of being on the right path and keeping your eyes peeled for obscure areas. Plus there're patches of freezing water, which obviously kills you, and I bring that up because you'd find these on a frozen waterfall, where one slip can kill your progress, at worst you.

Pac-Man channels his inner Indiana Jones in the next part, where a giant snowball comes tumbling down. It's tricky, but ironically it's a bit more bearable, probably because the final stretch isn't a sheet of ice that could kill you if you don't bail at the right time. The only thing that bugged me about this was that there was a galaxian I couldn't find, turns out that it was off the edge of a mountain. I could safely say that the galaxian could be achieved through a leap of faith. Well, then again, beyond a completionist run this just amounts to unlocking another maze you could play on your own volition.

Remember that frozen waterfall aspect? It's back with a moderate vengeance. You get to ice skate down to the end, and the moderate part just applies to getting every collectible. It takes some quick thinking because you could only hike backwards so far.

Pinky's the next boss here, and the snow motif compliments her ice cold nature quite nicely. This time you get to butt bounce on the top of the head of Pinky's machine to cause damage. To the victor goes the golden apple.

The Volcano

The hike peaks here, namely because this game has an excuse to include one-hit deaths in the form of lava. First you venture through a series of dark chasms to get into the volcano. Afterwards you get to the next level and have to find a way to drain the lava from the volcano to get the exit, but be warned, once you get down the lava will start rising back up. This culminates in a literal passage to hell, where you encounter more lava as you struggle to make it to the end, just to face the ultimate devil himself.

Clyde (Blinky technically), is the last of the individual ghost bosses, you just have to hit him from the top. This level is notorious for being the hardest level in the entire game, and for a good reason. Along with being set above lava, Clyde is the most relentless when it comes to attacks, and worst of all, his only weak spot has a bizarre hit-box. I suffered with this when I first played it, so I'm kinda relieved that it wasn't a pain in the ass because I somehow sucked.

The Ocean

Luckily, this game gives you a bit of a break. Here it's just a matter of making it to the end while dodging obstacles. Oh yeah, this is a swimming stage. Hope you savored the first two levels, because the next one is a submarine, and it's a bit more challenging than the previous levels. you just gotta hit the obstacles at the right time while keeping your limited and only relatively rechargeable torpedos in check. You could also get mines and a gun to aid you. What's fair to note is that the amount of fruits you need to get in these levels are lower, probably because they're a bit harder to come by here.

It culminates in Pac-Man facing all four ghosts who drive a submarine. You have to hit the propellers on the back, while dodging mines and the additional heavy artillery. For your reward, you get the golden banana, rounding off the golden fruit collection.

But it's not over.

Ghost World

The challenge returns, but this time it's not in the same vein as the volcano levels. It starts off with a retread of the ice-skating level, this time, with in-line skates as you venture down the boardwalk, avoiding loose platforms and the occasional enemy. Fairly straightforward, at least when compared to the next two levels. Take what you learned throughout the game into account when you get to the next level, don't be afraid to try new things, otherwise you'll be left pondering if you could make it to the next area with a rev roll of faith.

The next one is interesting. You encounter Wormwood, an evil twin of the golden fruit tree who admits that his only purpose is to keep Pac-Man preoccupied by having him go through a maze, and this maze doesn't fuck around, sometimes you gotta take a risk just to make sure you get to the right area. In time, Wormwood will challenge you to kill 20 skeletons, twice, within a certain time limit. Once you reach Wormwood, he dies and Spooky catches wind of this. Interestingly in the Game Boy Advance version you actually get to fight Wormwood, but whatever, you get to encounter a boss after this so it balances out.

Spooky

Remember that jump kick move? The one that has primarily been used to kill a small spattering of enemies and open hanging boxes? That's your prime method of dealing with Spooky here. Hit him enough times while dodging summoned enemies, fire and debris, and congratulations, your journey is over. I hope you'll come back to get the collectibles you've missed.

Extras

After you beat each level, you have the option to do a time trial. You job is to complete the level in the quickest time. Collectibles are replaced with clocks that freeze the counter. Oh, by the way, while the game does have a checkpoint system, for the sake of having a fair time count you get sent back to the beginning if you die.

Graphics

For something straight out of 2002, it held up pretty well. The graphics are appealing and complete with a smooth frame rate, not to mention it has a nice art style, complimenting the Pac-Man aesthetic with relative simplicity and a warm color scheme.

That is, for 2002.

Music

The soundtrack has typically been a defining factor for video games, and this one is no exception. At worst, for each level the songs are modest re-recordings with minimal differences. Then again, this could be used to give each level their own identity while keeping with the theme of each level. It seems like the developers couldn't decide what track they wanted to go with, so they just gave it to each level.

Whatever the case, the music compliments the levels nicely, and a personal stand out is the water levels' music.

What else?

I never beat this game 100%. I couldn't sack up and try to get the remaining fruit and tokens. As a result, I missed out on unlocking the museum. With 150 tokens, you could enter the museum and view concept art. Well, since I could no longer play the game, I looked it up, and tell me, what would you think the museum would be like? Do you get to explore a new area? Well...

It's a fucking slideshow.

I don't know if this is the standard for the other ports, but goddamn, what a letdown. I wouldn't be so upset had the tokens been easier to obtain, but here we are. I guess the concept art's interesting, but not 150 tokens interesting. Then again Ms. Pac-Man isn't worth 180 tokens, then again there's a bug on the GameCube version that affects the maze's colors.

Not to mention, there's no clear reward for doing everything 100%. I looked it up and couldn't get any indication of a reward, so I guess the collectibles just exist for replay value.

Overall

Beyond the gripes I gave for some petty shit, this is hands down one of my favorite games ever. It's challenging, just like any good game but it helps encourage you to sack up and beat the levels, there's a good variety of familiar and new enemies and Namco certainly hasn't forgotten their roots. There's certainly a lot to return to, well, if you could find the right amount of tokens, then you'd have the luxury of owning a basic Pac-Man compilation with a game built around it, sorta like a more fleshed-out Sonic Jam.

It certainly deserved to be one of the best selling Pac-Man games of all time, proving that you don't need to go all out to keep your mascot relevant, just make a damn good game and work off of what worked in older titles, and this is coming from someone who draws the line after Sonic Heroes.

Shrek Extras Addendum

I suck at promises, but I have nothing to do today, I have nothing else I want to cover for now, and I figured I'd take on what I missed in my Shrek review before I put it on some obscure site nobody gives a shit about. Here's the bonus features.

What I Missed

Apparently there were other changes to the game I failed to catch. First for the minor ones, Red Dragon's Castle and Prince Charming's Castle are renamed to the Blue Dragon's Castle and The Crown Prince's Castle. May I ask for the latter, why? This was well a time before Shrek 2. You could say it's for copyright reasons, so that's why they included a reference to Snow White and the Seven Dwarves in one of their added levels.

Busted.

Anyhow, the structure behind each mission in Extra Large is mostly the same, just described differently. Though some have been altered, such as where you need to bring the skeletons because the original area is where you retrieve the magic armor. No skin off its tit, that makes the game a bit less difficult. In the Molasses Sewers, there's a time limit on one of the missions, the valve mission, which believe it or not makes sense. The limits themselves are generous and more time is given to you after every valve you hit, and if you lose, you just get booted back to your latest checkpoint.

There's also the stuff you find, namely a dragon flame after the Blue Dragon stage, which proves to be helpful when trying to break down the locked doors. One more thing that I should've brought up before the missions come around when you get to a certain point, and sometimes they need to be done in a certain order to get everything open. This is straightforward, but would you think to get hit by an enemy to start one of the missions? As for the verbatim missions, they're mostly optional, you just need to beat four of the six, but if you decide to sack up and do the others, you're rewarded with extra health.

Race Mode

You could switch between the story mode and this mode. In race mode, you have to complete the objectives in each world within a set time limit. I failed to bring this up when talking about the level mechanics, but once you beat a stage you're booted back to the map. Thanks to that, the race mode is fairly sensible. What's your reward for doing this? You get money you could use to pay for cheats.

Cheats

The XBOX version has the highest amounts of cheats. These amount to visual alterations which display the various layers, huh get it, of the graphics, as well as insight to how the game did deferred shading. Some of these are a money sink, namely one where everything turns 90% dark, almost as if they predicted the grittier appearance of the GameCube version. They also have slow and fast cheats, which exist solely for comedic purposes, as well as infinite gas and flame, an automatic gas cheat if you wanna channel your inner frat boy humor, low gravity, super strength, and invincibility, of course. There's seemingly a trap cheat, $ for Merlin. Best to save that one for last.

In the GameCube version, along with cutting the list of cheats in half, these are typically available after you complete the game. I take it the missions you complete double as currency.

The Dungeon

I brought up that the GameCube version has an out of bounds dungeon that you can't escape from unless you reset the game. But lo and behold, the XBOX has it too. While the GameCube version is set in, well, an actual GameCube.

Right here.

The XBOX version sends you to an actual dungeon.

Right here.

These could only be found if you wind up out of bounds, and you could only get out of bounds once you have the right cheats enabled. It's believed that these were test stages hidden within the game's code, but I have a much grander theory. DICE Canada knew what was up, they knew their game wasn't entirely polished, so to punish those exploiting the finer details, they set up an inescapable dungeon.

Overall

Now that I got a more thorough understanding of either game, I can conclude that Shrek Extra Large... lived up to the title, there certainly was a lot more to there than the XBOX version, I could forgive the downgraded graphics given that the GameCube is weaker hardware, but it's just not that remarkable.

Both versions aren't very good, but why do I keep going back to them? Aside from a hopefully dead meme, there's an alluring quality to these games. Its visuals are hard to ignore, you can't deny it's one of if not the first games to introduce the concept of deferred shadowing, and you can't deny Shrek's Treasure Hunt, Shrek Swamp Kart Racing and Shrek Fairy Tale Freakdown is worse.

What have I missed this time?