Napoleon Dynamite The Game Review! Gosh!

I have got to give credit to the Crave developers because they managed to make a movie-based game on a movie I thought nearly impossible to make a movie about, Napoleon Dynamite. The story and setting in that movie don’t really lend itself well to the gaming world but, then again, neither did The Golden Compass but that didn’t stop people from making a game about it. Instead of just rehashing the movie plot, Crave took things a step further and created their own special story line for the game, which I can only assume takes place after the events in the movie.

The story won’t be winning the academy awards anytime soon. Napoleon is having a football (American football) throwing competition with his uncle. During the competition he manages to hit the fence with the ball, causing it to open. Tina immediately escapes and you have to track her down. Perhaps they should’ve invested in a fence that wasn’t made out of cardboard.

Speaking of cardboard, that’s exactly what the graphics are, pieces of cardboard. Everything in the game looks like a cheap cut out, like someone copied and pasted various pics together using Photoshop. I’ve played flash games that looked better than this. If there’s one thing I can praise is that Crave used actual dialogue for the movie in the game.

Granted, even with all these problems, I’d whole-heartedly forgive it just as long as the game play is awesome. It’s not. The game play consists entirely of mini games, which would be great, except for the fact that the only competent mini game happens to be a Gradius style shooter where you jump on the back of Pegasus and shoot up flying rocket-propelled cows and giant crabs in space. (see, that’s awesome) The rest of the mini games are nothing special, from hitting certain keys to perform dance moves to hitting a piñata and playing tetherball, it all feels less like fun and more like a chore. What any of the mini games has to do with catching the loose llama is beyond my knowledge.

It’s at this point in the review that I recommend to the game to certain demography but honestly; I can’t recommend it to anyone. The only people who’ll actually buy the game are fans of the movie and nothing I say will deter that. Your money would be better saved buying another PSP game.