Rise of the Guardians is an animated featured film from DreamWorks featuring mythical creations of fantasy icons from childhood like North (Santa Claus), Tooth (Tooth Fairy), Bunnymund (Easter Bunny), Sandman and Jack Frost. Rise of the Guardians The Video Game is based off of the same movie staying faithful to the characters and concept of the film.
In the game you control one of the ‘Guardians’ to help battle against even shadow nightmares and a bad dude name ‘Pitch‘. On paper the game sounds great – play a co-op classic beat ’em up as one of the characters from the movie with your friends on the couch next to you. In reality – the game should have been sent back to the ‘drawing board’.
Rise of the Guardians The Video Game is visually tough to handle – the on-screen action is so busy that you’ll easily find yourself lost in the action. The ensemble of characters always appear on screen fighting together even if you are playing solo – AI will control the other Guardians. Another area of the game that puzzled us was the absence of animated transition scenes — watching half-animated still frames of cut scenes of a video game adaptation of a cartoon just seems a bit backwards – sorta like watching the pre-rendered animatics for the actual movie.
There is some random fun to be had and if you loved the Rise of the Guardians movie you may find yourself looking for this as a stocking stuffer – we’ve provided some entertaining gameplay with commentary by Black Nerd Comedy to go along with the review!
Rise of the Guardians The Video Game is available now for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Nintendo Wii, Nintendo Wii U, Nintendo 3DS and Nintendo DS (although we reviewed the game on console).
Related Links:
Rise of the Guardians Gameplay Commentary
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNBMPjJAj2A
Rise of the Guardians Developer Interview
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87DzHYnffTY
Rise of the Guardians Launch Trailer
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xko6bgfXyGI
Rise of the Guardians Movie Review
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yz8xfl6jxWg