The Shrekoning: Shrek 2 (Xbox)

After languishing under the roof of TDK since the release of the first film, the video games rights to the Shrek franchise were finally pulled from their grip when they were acquired by Take-Two Interactive with Shrek: Reekin’ Havoc being the last game they’d put out under the brand’s banner. The 2003 acquisition was just in time too, as Shrek 2 would hit theaters in May of 2004 and the inevitable video game tie-ins for the film would be on the horizon. With the license now in Activision’s hands they actually produced many different games all wearing the simple name of Shrek 2 but what that game entailed varied from platform to platform. The Xbox, PlayStation 2, and GameCube would receive a Shrek game that didn’t seem interested in building on previous titles and instead set out in a new, more focused direction as four-player action and the actual events of the film it was adapting would be the focus of this particular Shrek 2 game.

Shrek 2, known as Shrek 2: Team Action when it eventually was released on PC as well because it differed from the original PC game called Shrek 2, follows the film’s events pretty closely, things beginning after Shrek and Fiona have tied the knot and started to live their life together. However, marrying a princess means the standoffish and disgusting Shrek was now married into royalty, and after heading off to meet his in-laws in the medieval Beverly Hills parody Far Far Away, he finds he’s not too welcome. While Shrek’s father-in-law plots to have Shrek taken care of though, Shrek has a personal crisis as he feels he truly isn’t worthy of Princess Fiona, heading off to find the Fairy Godmother in the hopes she can use her magic to make him into the handsome prince he believes she deserves. Many of the key moments of the film are turned into levels for Shrek 2, the encounter with the mercenary turned friend Puss in Boots presented as a minigame based around timed button presses and the climactic finale made into a pretty decent string of final levels. There are moments added to the adventure so it’s not as short as the movie, Shrek and his friends finding themselves in new locations and situations such as helping the Billy Goats Gruff cross bridges or making sure the Three Blind Mice can safely make their way through a dark forest. Not only does the game try to include the film franchise’s love for riffing on fairy tale tropes and embracing grossness, but it even gets on Shrek 2’s greater leaning towards direct pop culture references, an entirely invented mines area full of frog men made for the game that doesn’t hide its Lord of the Rings inspiration.

In all of the game’s levels there will be four playable characters all in on the action at once. If you play with fewer than four players, the participating players can swap to the other characters as they wish, which is important because the area navigation often has specific segments designed to take advantage of a character’s specific abilities. Shrek’s strength lets him move heavy objects around, Donkey has a”Burro Blast” to break open gates, and the Gingerbread Man can hit objects from far away with a candy cane boomerang. While the actual substance of these moves is simple, the game does start to try and challenge them like when the Big Bad Wolf’s huffing and puffing breath is used to move giant metal balls around a prison to break things open or Puss in Boots’s tight rope walking starts to require him to hop across different ropes or leap over thorns. Besides these unique abilities though, characters actually function pretty similarly, all able to jump as much as they need to in the usually simple platforming and mostly having pretty similar attacks when in fights. Lil’ Red and Tinkerbell, two incredibly minor characters in the film franchise, are made playable at parts to pad out groups who can’t justify including characters like Fiona at the time due to story reasons and fight normally with projectiles, this choice at least giving you some combat variety when they’re part of the pack. The game actually gives Lil’ Red a fair bit of attention as she weaves in and out of the group, Red Riding Hood possibly an important celebrity in this world but the game’s sporadic use of her makes her actual background rather hard to figure out. It can seem like they’re trying to make a character of their own, but they do have fun with Donkey’s raucous humor and the Big Bad Wolf’s dry line delivery as well so it’s not like the game devolves into The Lil’ Red Show thankfully.

The fairly basic battle system does lead to most fights either being hammering the attack button or using the special character skill if it can help in a battle, but Shrek 2 on Xbox doesn’t focus much on the fighting. In fact, when you’re in a battle it usually features some some extra clause or complication to make it more than just about clearing away baddies. You might be protecting Cinderella from goons while she’s window shopping, trying to push your way past spiders and living pumpkins to destroy the object making them, or actually hoping to avoid the knights guarding the prison and the fight arises from your failure to avoid them. Your simplistic attacks aren’t as big of a problem when they’re helping with a goal where the battle isn’t the main point of what you’re doing, but an issue does arise with the game’s insistence on keeping all four characters on screen and participating at the same time. AI controlled partners have quite a few little issues you have to accommodate unless you have a full set of four human players. They might not even attack nearby enemies until you’ve started hitting someone yourself, they don’t have very good self-preservation instincts so they might end up dying even in easy fights, and at some points they might get caught on level geometry or even just refuse to move past a certain point. Prodding them or briefly taking control of them can overcome the navigation issues usually, but the game will not allow the screen to move if it would potentially put a character off-screen, even if they are a dead body. The character will revive after the current fight is over so the computer players coming up short there isn’t too punishing, but sometimes you can be trapped by them dying in a bad spot and in moments like the final boss fight where healing items can be off-screen such problems do arise. One problem that can emerge even with human players though is the fact that any time a character falls down a pit the entire team will have their progress reset to the last checkpoint, and with some thin bridges, segments where everyone needs to jump across a gap, and the fact characters can not only hit each other but won’t pass through each other, sometimes good progress in a level might suddenly be upended if someone is accidentally shoved to their doom.

The four character system does have its faults, but the game puts a surprising amount of creativity in its level designs that are rarely bogged down by those factors. One level might be free form low pressure exploration only for the next to have you constantly needing to move forward to protect the Three Blind Mice from various traps. Far Far Away and the farm of Jack and Jill both take the form of hubs where you splinter off and do special missions in separate areas, some of them practically minigames. Every level save some special boss ones actually has an extra layer placed over it with thanks to the Snapshot system. Certain tasks in a level will earn you a snapshot for your scrapbook, some of these just part of completing the level but many are optional objectives to shoot for. Almost every level has a bunch of hidden Magic Beans to find to reward a bit of exploration, some stages have you free trapped dwarves which involve a brief bit of puzzle-solving, and other little ideas like rounding up chickens for a stew add a new goal that shifts the gameplay from walking around, jumping about, and punching plain enemies. Some ideas are weaker than others like a running section in the potion factory where upcoming obstacles you’re meant to dodge can block the screen, but mostly the Snapshot system contributes a nice way to keep a player searching around a stage in the same way the coins used to buy upgrades do. The upgrades are small boosts to things like health and their prices are surprisingly high so it’s good the game threw in more to do in a level than collect this currency that takes a while to add up.

Many stages also feature special Hero Time segments where a single character steps forward for a unique gameplay segment. Fiona will need to sing to some blackbirds so they can be used in a pie, Donkey will have to chase someone down atop his romantic partner Dragon, and Lil’ Red has a small boss fight on conveyor belts, but some are platforming segments that tap into a new idea like one focused a lot on dodging hazards or one where the ground keeps crumbling underneath you. Besides the shift to only one character these do seem like the kind of stuff you’d do for a Snapshot but with a sharper focus, and similarly the unlockable challenges for earning enough Snapshots often take that form as well. The challenges are usually about collecting as much cash as you can in a small time limit and is likely the game’s way to make buying those upgrades easier, although the requirements to unlock them likely means buying things is still likely an idea for a replay through the game rather than a first run. You can easily select stages to make completing the remaining Snapshots easy too, the game even keeping the amount of collectables you’ve found saved between level runs to make earning them all a more appealing prospect.

THE VERDICT: While the four character system in Shrek 2 on Xbox has a few faults that hurt the game flow, this adventure through the twisted fairy tale world of Shrek mostly makes up for it with some pretty solid ideas on how to keep shifting up what you’re involved in. The action platforming’s simplicity means it needs those extra goals to spice things up, but the Snapshot system and concepts like Hero Time do mean you are experiencing new and fairly decent shakeups that keep things somewhat interesting. Shrek 2 never settles into a rut and keeps coming up with new ways to use your team of characters even near the end, so while it kneecapped itself some with how it handles having the group on screen, it still makes the animated film into a co-op game with some appeal.

And so, I give Shrek 2 for Xbox…

An OKAY rating. The main thing holding Shrek 2 back is the insistence that all characters must be present at all times save for Hero Time. Having four human players running around at once would make up for some of its flaws with the increase in partner competence even though that won’t completely assuage certain issues like how character deaths are handled, but if there isn’t a full set of players the game would greatly benefit from having only human controlled characters on screen most of the time and the player could swap them out with the same button they use to swap between them now. Moments with a combat focus or broader cooperation could always bring them back in as well and make it a sort of Team Time, but even if the game stubbornly wanted to weaken itself with the whole group out at once it could have at least had things like falling off an edge not reset the team’s progress or make it so you can walk through each other to avoid accidentally shoving each other off a bridge. A greater limitation on how many characters participate in fights could also lead to more engaging fights, the game already having a few moments like trolls where you need to bounce bombs back at them rather than just hammering your attack button that show more potential for the action, but luckily Shrek 2 is constantly thinking of ways to inject some life into its action formula. The Snapshot concept as well as levels having broader goals like the mission structures of the hub-focused areas or ones with a persistent goal like protecting the blind mice mean few levels truly feel like they’re cut from the same cloth. Shrek 2 tries to be creative even if it mechanical basics are sometimes holding it back, but it encroaches on being a legitimately good experience because it keeps concocting new concepts on how it can squeeze variety out of how you play even if the cast of characters are mostly defined by a singular ability.

Right out of the gate, Shrek 2 on Xbox shows that TDK’s stewardship was of the brand was a mistake. Shrek can be the star of decent titles, ones that are faithful and yet come up with their own ideas on things to add as well. The stumbling points of the four character system keep it from soaring, but playing through Shrek 2 still provides entertaining moments and ones that pique your interest because it tries to provide diverse situations to make up for its mostly plain core action mechanics that could have doomed a less ambitious game to much worse than mediocrity. It’s not repetitive, it is mostly structurally sound, and it’s actually interesting to see what’s next because the game has a good sense how to complicate play without making it too difficult or obtuse. It turns out, if you have some actual standards for your games instead of slapping the brand on any idea that crosses the desk, you can actually make a decent Shrek video game.