Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas: Oogie’s Revenge (PS2)
The Nightmare Before Christmas has a foot in both of America’s biggest holidays and ends up one of those films where people debate if it’s seasonably appropriate viewing or not. Considering it’s a movie about Halloween characters trying to imitate Christmas it feels squarely in both sides, giving each half about equal attention even though the protagonists are the terrifying but well-meaning monsters of Halloweentown. Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas: Oogie’s Revenge positions itself as a sequel to the film’s events and can’t quite have Jack Skellington have another go at imitating the December holiday, but bringing back its charismatic baddie, stylish looks, holiday settings, and wonderful music certainly sounds like a promising start to a video game even if it is going for the rather simple licensed game approach of just having the film’s main villain come back for round two.
Jack Skellington, the friendly but fearsome darling of Halloweentown and it’s top scarer, has once again experienced a bit of seasonal ennui as he wants to bring a real showstopper to the next Halloween celebration. However, while leaving town to search for something that would really wow people, the mischievous trio of Lock, Shock, and Barrel resurrect their fallen boss. The boogeyman Oogie Boogie comes back with a vengeance and takes advantage of Jack’s absence to sow chaos across Halloweentown, the citizens scrambled and captured while Oogie even sets out to interfere with the other holiday themed towns. The game doesn’t really bring in its film’s Christmas side until near the end and sadly we’re still left questioning what a St. Patrick’s Day town and Thanksgiving themed village would be like since we never drop by them, but Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas: Oogie’s Revenge definitely goes the extra mile in realizing its main setting.
Every area of Hallowentown seen in the claymation film is brought to life and yours to explore in this PS2 title, and since Tim Burton’s style is already oozing with a uniquely creepy charm it is nice to be able to walk across the spiral hill or battle Oogie Boogie in his gambling themed base. The game takes its time heading to such settings too while making sure to fill the areas in and around the Halloween themed settlement with enough things to do, and it’s nice to see minor characters like the four vampires or the clown with a tearaway face get a bit more focus as part of bringing the town back together. Recognizable iconography will certainly thrill fans of the film and even if your memory of it is a bit hazy the game still does make sure you can get to know important players like Jack, his ragdoll-like friend Sally, and the main villain Oogie well enough that it doesn’t rely fully on film knowledge to understand and appreciate.
One thing that is made even better for seeing the film but still would shine just as bright without it though is the game’s music. While the score is certainly a good fit and appropriately captures the mood of spooky but not scary, the game features not only many of the songs with lyrics from the film but it’s own original takes on them as well. For most of the battles in the game, The Nightmare Before Christmas’s opening song “This is Halloween” plays until the battle is over, and while it definitely takes a bit too long to swap in some new music, it’s not a song that wears out its welcome quickly thanks to Danny Elfman’s original composition being energetic and varied across its run time. When it does get replaced it’s with “Take our Town Back” which is actually a version of the song “Making Christmas” from the film with the lyrics changed to be the townspeople singing about their hopes for Jack to overthrow Oogie Boogie. In fact, this version might be an even catchier song than the original with its new lyrics that fit the beat more naturally.
However the big showstoppers are the songs that play during boss fights. “Oogie Boogie’s Song” is reworded many times to fit the various points in the plot you come in conflict with him, Jack and Oogie actually having a verbal battle on top of their actual fights. To help those moments feel more authentic you even have the voice actors from the film reprising Jack and Oogie, but even if the songs have new actors swapped in, you still have things like “Sally’s Song” turned into a dramatic song that feels almost like it’s from The Phantom of the Opera as it’s been turned into something more bombastic than the soft version from the film. However, it is a bit odd that Sally’s Song plays every time you fight the associated spider boss even when it’s recycled without the context of Sally being nearby. One of the better conceptual lyric swaps has to be when “What’s This?” becomes “Oh No!” in Christmastown, Jack’s song about the wonder at experiencing such a drastically different town now turned on its head as he sings a lament that Christmastown’s future is in jeopardy and Oogie has perverted the decor. Chris Sarandon as Jack does an impressive job belting out the music considering he only did the spoken lines in the film, but Ken Page as Oogie makes sure to bring his delightful over-the-top antics back and deliver on the character’s smooth but sinister personality whether he’s singing a jazzy number or bragging and laughing it up outside the context of a song.
If all you want is a faithful game based on the beloved film, Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas: Oogie’s Revenge gets down most of the expected aesthetic qualities while also introducing fun twists to the familiar on top of it. When we start looking at the gameplay though, some things do come up a bit short. Jack’s main weapon in the game is a long green spectral whip called the Soul Robber, and while it does get a few special attacks and maneuvers as the game advances and you buy upgrades for it, most of your battles will still boil down to mashing a button for the simplest combo to slap around skeletons. The game does introduce enemies who can’t be mindlessly bashed to bits so easily, larger armored skeletons requiring repositioning to hit them where they can’t defend, projectile throwing skeletons requiring you to prioritize them, and large groups of skeletons can even justify whipping out the grab maneuver. If you grab things with the Soul Robber you can pull them back and slam them into the ground or other enemies making such an attack good for crowd control or effective once the overabundant skeletons are joined by more appreciable variety like ghosts and demented toys. When your basic combo is fully upgraded it at least gets some things like an aerial launcher in the mix that gives it more potential and you can do a spinning slap to get enemies off you if they’re close, but its reliable consistent damage unfortunately does lead to consistently plain tactics for most of the fights in an action game that prioritizes those over things like some nice and varied moments of area exploration and platforming.
Jack does eventually get two extra means of attacking, but both with drawbacks. Pop on the Pumpkin King suit and the skeleton now wears a jack-o-lantern that lets him breathe fire, but there’s a cost. If you want to blow foes back with an explosive blast, you spend a resource that isn’t fairly common and while you will be collecting a lot of money during your adventure, buying refills is expensive and you’re better off funneling that cash into more meaningful upgrades. You even need to use the Pumpkin King suit to sometimes clear away barriers and its attacks are slow, so instead it feels more like an option to whip out if you need to deal big damage once. Santa Jack is a bit of a better alternative, the Christmas themed costume allowing Jack to throw out presents that have a few different functions. A surprising gift can break foes out of the more powerful Oogie-enhanced state and the freezing present keeps them still for a bit, but the present toss is a fairly slow action and you can only have three presents out at once so rarely can it be used consistently in the battles. You can mix it in better and it has more clear moments of utility in both normal and boss fights than Pumpkin King, but this potential avenue for attack variety ends up not doing as much as it could have to add more energy to the common battles.
Areas do have a lot of secrets that are worth finding so you can get more health refilling vials and health upgrades, but it is fairly easy to avoid taking too much damage in a fight even though it can add up over time or during longer boss fights. Some segments are even more focused on the platforming like a challenging lava gauntlet and a section where you need to find four bats around a part of town that would be an enjoyable scavenger hunt if the bats were easier to snag once you did find them. However, while the navigation is solid, the combat does have one thing left to gift in the form of actual dance portions. The boss fights in general do tend to avoid some of the problems with repetition save when their design is just throwing a bunch of enemies at you like Lock, Shock, and Barrel do in their individual battles, but when you’ve facing someone like Oogie you not only get a fight with more substance, attack strategies, and meaningful dodging, but if you collect enough of the music notes that pop out of the boss, you get into the rhythm game portion. As Jack and his foe stop fighting for a bit and truly just sing to each other, you need to accurately press buttons as their prompts fly in from the left side of the screen. You can miss some and still pull off the number, but it can be cut short if you fail too many times and deal lesser damage. Do it right though and you get a huge burst of damage to the boss and some of the battle songs even progress to new verses as you get deeper into them, and since the rhythm game portions do actually get challenging in the later fights it ends up a part of the battle to look forward to even if it’s mostly because they’re good punctuation for the important skirmishes.
THE VERDICT: When it comes to carrying on the look, tone, and even musical excellence of the film, Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas: Oogie’s Revenge is a worthy sequel that gives you a chance to better explore Halloweentown and experience beloved songs with new situationally appropriate lyrics. The game does a pretty decent job with its platforming and puzzles as well as making its boss fights standout affairs, but the fights are still a huge part of the experience and end up undermining the quality elsewhere with their plainness. Repetitive Soul Robber swinging is the name of the game for far too long and your alternate costumes are too restricted in their abilities to be useful, so even though the game nails the presentation, you spend less time drinking that in than you do slapping skeletons around.
And so, I give Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas: Oogie’s Revenge for PlayStation 2…
An OKAY rating. For brief moments like battles in the Hinterlands you need to complete in a time limit, Tim Burton’s Nightmare Before Christmas: Oogie’s Revenge does suddenly demand better battle tactics, but while that makes them perfect for whipping out the Pumpkin King, most of the battles are too plain to require fancy maneuvers or expending such resources. It still definitely succeeds in certain areas like how well it captures the Tim Burton style and how the game takes already catchy and memorable music and reworks them into something that matches the game’s events and still sounds excellent. Besides playing “This is Halloween” for far too many normal fights, it rarely feels like the game compromises in capturing the world of the film and giving everything personality and detail, but the battle system ends up getting the burden of carrying the moments between the musical boss fights and decent area navigation. The Soul Robber is simply too basic and the enemies don’t demand enough of it, but this could have been acceptable if swapping to the other costumes gave you meaningful attack options. Pumpkin King and Santa Jack both have very limited functions and thus don’t get to spice up the battle system like you’d hope, but they would have been the perfect way to inject more variety into the experience if they were realized move sets required for certain enemy types.
Luckily, the combat is mostly repetitive and hollow rather than annoying, slow, or downright broken. If you have an interest in the license being adapted it’s easy enough to swallow the downside of mostly vapid fights just to get a chance to see the world and hear those reworded songs, but there are still too many straightforward fights to completely disregard them. Swinging the Soul Robber so much wears down the experience, but there are worse games to play for both Halloween and Christmas so this game can coast on its more impressive and better realized features well enough to sustain you if you need your Nightmare Before Christmas fix on either holiday.