Day 284, Game 284 - Turbo: Super Stunt Squad

Okay, I swear I'm not trolling here. Given yesterday's blog entry, I can see where some eyebrows would be raised, but honestly, I'm back on the serious bandwagon. Well, as serious as possible when talking about the game I played, Turbo: Super Stunt Squad. I'm not trying to question anyone's intelligence by proclaiming this to be in the upper echelon of serious video games, but I at least went into this game with real, actual intentions to have fun. 

Well, it wasn't about me having fun as much as it was having fun with my now five year old daughter, who came over for the weekend. We saw Turbo, the movie, a couple of weeks ago, and she really enjoyed it. To her credit, it's hard not to like juiced-up, neon glowing racing snails, kid or not. Anyway, I saw the game in the Redbox when I was getting some stuff at the store for her weekend with me, and while she isn't super interested in games (yet), aside from Disney Infinity, I still thought there was a chance to have some fun with her playing this game. 

At the very least, I hoped it would make for a good blog post, but I'll settle for a decent one, because beggars can't be choosers, right?

Anyway, this game is your stereotypical movie licensed video game, which as we should all know by now, means it's just not very good. For kids, sure, these type of games are serviceable and do their job as far as tying in what they saw in the movies they loved to video games, giving parents an alternative to buying video games that they don't know much about and worry might be too impressionable for them. If they took their children to the theater to see one of these animated movies, they feel comfortable knowing that the games aren't going to stray too far away from the formula on the big screen.

While I hoped this game would be more about racing, I was actually surprised to find the game felt more like a Tony Hawk game, sliding around as your snail and trying to pull off jumps, tricks and of course, as the name implies, stunts. This stuff was actually in the movie, which drastically got overlooked by the whole racing theme, but I found it to be far more entertaining, and could see a sequel coming focusing more on that. 

The game is fine, gameplay wise, as the controls and everything worked okay. the graphics were lackluster compared to true AAA titles, but really, no one was expecting cutting edge graphics in this game. More importantly, my daughter had fun playing and watching me play, despite the normal frustrations a five year old would have with any video games. She loved all the voices and characters and familiarity she had, as she had some basis for connection to the game. 

And if my daughter had fun, then this game - and blog post for that matter - is a winner. 

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