Megamind: Ultimate Showdown

Every now and then you need a quick game to run through to make yourself feel good. Megamind fits the bill. I was able to smash through it in one afternoon and it was good that it wasn’t drawn out because it’s the not the best movie tie-in ever. I’m not going to waste too much time talking about how these games are just there to generate additional money from the franchise with no thought to decent gaming so I’ll move straight on.

I haven’t actually watched the movie but I am led to believe that Ultimate Showdown takes place after the events of the movie. You play as Megamind playing through various levels in order to find your inventions to get some DNA tracking machine working so you can beat the weird Superhero guy who is actually evil.

The gameplay is very basic. You have a few different weapons that need to be used to navigate through the environment and they all have basically the same damage rate against the enemies you face. There are also boss battles which require you to work out the pattern of the boss movements and counter them - a fairly standard concept for this type of game.

Graphically it’s weak and one indication of this is that it’s hard to tell which environmental items can be destroyed and which can’t. There were several deaths I suffered owing to the fact that it was difficult to see what plane I was jumping in and missed several platforms because of this. Trial and error platforming is a fail in my book. It should be seemless and down to the player’s judgement whether you make a jump or not – not down to the fact that the camera positioning is balls. The sound effects were equally rubbish, generally because it’s aimed at kids and kids supposedly enjoy repetitive annoying noises.

Achievements – 1,000 Points – 25 Achievements

As I said, it was a relatively quick completion. You get 16 of the bad boys just for playing through the story and it is at no point challenging.

Aside from completing the game, there are also achievements for killing each boss without dying and another one for completing any level without dying. There is also something called BINKEY that needs to be collected to get upgrades. You need to collect 3,000 of it in one level which will net you 3 achievements. There is also another for collecting 150 BINKEY in the lair which you visit after every mission.

Once you’ve done all that, you will have 1,000 points and nothing left to do. Routine.

Download Content – N/A

Megamind will be over shortly after it’s started but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. It is a quick completion for the score-whores that offers little in the way of fun and replayability.