Shrek: The Third

Considering my previous experiences with movie tie-in games, I have no idea why I bought this but I remember the process. I added it to my Amazon basket. It went out of stock with the seller so I found another seller and added it again. I must have repeated this process three of four times before eventually buying the game, probably out of fear that I would never be able to buy it if I didn’t take the latest chance. So I bought something I didn’t want for a reason I can’t remember. Unless it was to write a review of another shitty movie tie-in game. Because that’s what it is. Shitty.

Shrek: The Third may follow the story of Shrek: The Third­. I don’t actually know because I’ve never watched the movie and I don’t like Shrek. Why did I buy this game?! Anyway, Shrek is tasked with going through a load of linear levels to get Arthur to beat up Prince Charming and become the new king. There are also some levels that you play as Donkey, Fiona and Sleeping Beauty, the latter who appears to have only been added to the game to show off how shit the controls are, especially the combat.

They are all bad at fighting and the AI has an irritating habit of getting the first strike in then chaining hits preventing you from doing anything. There is some kind of bizarre fairy dust mechanic where you collect the dust to use special abilities. This becomes stupid in later levels as some of the characters need to use their special abilities to get through certain sections so you could end up in a position where you are stuck without fairy dust. That said, the game does hold your hand a bit and provides fairy dust all the time if it’s going to be needed so you would have to be a child to get this wrong. Wait, what’s the game’s audience again??

What else is wrong with the game play? Ah, yes the platforming elements. The game has a terrible depth perception so it’s hard to tell where you are in the 3D plan. This is bad generally, but worse for platforming when there are insta-death holes everywhere, especially as you can inadvertently jump to your death at any given moment. However this isn’t the worst part of it. The worst part comes when you go to make a jump and get snagged on an invisible wall and fall to your death. No thanks Shrek, that’s not what anybody wants.

There are two absolute bullshit levels where you use a catapult to knockdown a castle. The catapult is dire and you are on a time limit that on the hardest difficulty level means you have to be sniper-accurate with a weapon that is built specifically for you to fail. Great.

The graphical rendering is obviously balls, as the characters can’t interact properly with the environment. The environments all look dated too, which is no major surprise. The music and sound effects can also do one. If I didn’t need some of the non-player-characters to tell me what to do, I would have muted the damn thing. I’m not a fan of Shrek music to begin and what you get in the game is the discount version, complete with sound glitches and everything.

Achievements – 1,000 Points – 22 Achievements

It’s not a complicated list but due to the gameplay issues I’ve mentioned above, it’s a pain in the ass. The best place to start would be the difficulty related achievements. There are two related to completing the game on different difficulties but Shrek goes one step further down the annoying route by having both of these as purchasable extras using in-game currency. So you need to do a partial playthrough before you can unlock the hardest difficulty mode and pretty much complete the game to unlock super-easy mode. There is also an achievement for completing each level without dying on normal or harder so you are looking at three playthroughs to take the slightly longer path of least resistance. Oh, but the difficulty won’t help you when one of the characters snags that invisible wall and dies anyway.

Once you’re done fannying around with the difficulty, there’s a load of collectibles and challenge quests to complete in each level. Of these, the most frustrating ones are for using Shrek’s ogre power 3 times in a level. Even with the full benefit provided by more in-game purchases that boost fairy dust accumulation, it still takes a long time to charge up and I had to replay a few levels after not being successful the first time.

There are some cumulative achievements for performing certain actions with the characters, like using fairy dust or performing finishing moves. Some of these were also temperamental, but none compare to having to launch 50 enemies in the air and catch them when playing as Shrek. This was just absurd. Firstly, you need to punch them in the air – this is difficult if fighting two or more enemies at a time, which you are for most of the game. Then when they are in the air, a marker will appear and you need to stand in the marker to catch the enemy. Sounds simple enough but the marker moves and Shrek is basically an oil tanker after performing the punch attack so it turns in to a race. The enemies in the air don’t get stuck on the invisible walls like you do so you won’t be able to catch some of them when they go out of bounds. Oh, and if you do end up in the right place at the right time, sometimes Shrek just won’t catch them anyway. It’s like he heard that I hate him and his game and he is deliberately punishing me for being stupid enough to buy it.

Downloadable Content – N/A

Why I bought this game, I will never know. It did everything in its power to try and make me stop playing it but I didn’t give up with Assault Android Cactus, no way was this green twat going to stop me. This game deserves to join ET in a landfill. Good riddance.