Gravity Falls: Legend of the Gnome Gemulets (3DS)

While there is certainly plenty of television animation aimed solely towards younger audiences, the 21st century has lead to many more shows that embrace the all ages approach of design by making cartoons with extra aspects like secret depth and serial storytelling layered over the accessible humor and young cast. Shows like Adventure Time are clearly bigger examples of this trend than Gravity Falls, but the show about twins Mable and Dipper Pines instead lead their own form of all ages animation revolution over on the Disney Channel where their success allowed for later series like The Owl House to come to be. Gravity Falls balanced out its silly humor with plenty of mystery, character relationships growing over time and the focus on a new strange occurrence or creature every episode was also joined by the sign that there’s more going on under the surface in the strange fictional Oregon town the series gets its name from. Because of this success with a broader audience it’s easy to hope that the tie-in 3DS game Gravity Falls: Legend of the Gnome Gemulets would have some of the depth adult players expect from an experience, but it seems even with the show’s creator Alex Hirsch consulting on the game it has ended up the kind of title where the creators hope kids’ low standards fill in for weak content.

 

That isn’t to say there was no effort put into the title. The game stars the two twins Mable and Dipper discovering that their old foes the forest gnomes have had their special Gemulet stones stolen, and while they were on the opposite side of a conflict before where their leader Jeff wanted to make Mable his bride, the twins are willing to help him once they hear the Gemulets are vital to keeping the forest safe and healthy. Mable and Dipper are spot-on in terms of representing their personalities from the show, Mable’s goofy head-in-the-clouds attitude captured well without feeling like some artificial imitation that mistakes such behavior for pure randomness. While Dipper does lean a little away from his usual mystery hungry attitude at parts, it could be seen as a joke he’s telling that’s simply lost in the fact all the dialogue is represented only in text bubbles with a small range of character portraits to show the emotions of the speaker. Dipper and Mable aren’t the only successes, their older relative Grunkle Stan who gets involved when there’s a promise of gnome gold for helping is present with his greedy yet jovially eccentric attitude. His bare-faced acknowledgement of his money-hungry ways and other oddities around him makes his appearances all the more fun for it. An employee at Stan’s Mystery Shack named Soos has a fun running joke where he compares the game’s events to a heavily sword-focused video game he’s playing where the absurdity of just what can be a sword keeps escalating every time he updates you on it. Jeff the gnome’s running joke is a bit tired though, his spot as leader of the gnomes questioned every time you check in on him with a very slowly unfolding scene of other gnomes picking on him in a similar manner.

Visually the game does a fantastic job of just porting in the show’s animation style, important characters and locations looking exactly like they do in the show and thus giving that feeling you truly are playing within that show’s universe. The world of Gravity Falls is captured well in this side-scrolling platformer and the world map and area backgrounds are littered with references fans of the show can appreciate. Some can be subtle references to specific episodes and the game even includes some cryptograms to figure out for those who know the language cypher from the show, although those are purely for fun rather than tying into the adventure’s events. Many familiar characters like rich girl Pacifica Northwest, angsty teen Robbie, and even Mable’s adorable pet pig Waddles can give you side quests where you need to collect certain items while inside the game’s levels, but despite it being nice to have an excuse to interact with these characters, it’s practically pointless. The only reason these sidequests can’t be called thankless tasks is because the prize for doing them is literally a character thanking you, your only rewards for completing a collection often a few sentences acknowledging that you did grab the random little objects laying around during your adventure. At least if you stop by Old Man McGucket’s junkyard he will give you meaningful upgrades like more health or increased attack power for the spores you can collect in the game’s stages.

 

Those platforming stages actually have you control both Mable and Dipper at the same time, one always trailing behind but the option to switch which one you directly control important because they pack a few different ways to get around or fight. Dipper is given a set of battle cuffs so he can punch the very simple foes in the pair’s path while Mable is granted a new sweater whose sleeves can extend out so far she is able to use them like a whip. Dipper is meant to be the stronger attacker while Mable’s sleeves are used to hit foes almost out of reach, and only Dipper can do things like deflect projectiles with his uppercuts so he’s clearly meant to be your go-to pick for most fights. Upgrades can make Mable a competent pick though, but as you progress you’ll find any moment you need to fight a feral gnome or evil totem (almost every basic enemy a light variation on these two templates) will still be a pretty slow fight where you hit them over and over until they finally go down. You don’t need to fight every foe in your path although the required encounters alone would still leave these skirmishes repetitive and basic, but taking down enemies can grant you extra spores that you otherwise only collect from the environment and some subquest items only appear once a totem or gnome has been defeated. At least these battles are so simple and low in risk that you won’t have trouble overcoming them, but some danger could have lead to excitement instead of dull acceptance of the fact that a foe is blocking the way forward.

Combat isn’t really the focus of the platforming despite the fact it does take a fair bit of time to even work over one enemy. Besides simple jumping challenges, Mable and Dipper are also given different tools to help them navigate. Dipper gets a few flashlight puzzles where you drag your stylus around until you find a reflective surface that are unfortunately never very interesting, but then you have things like Mable’s grappling hook that can eventually give her some decent vertical platforming segments. While Dipper shrinking just lets him enter small gaps, reuniting the twins after the separation is sometimes a tiny puzzle. The gradual rollout of new augmentations to your gizmos keeps progress mildly interesting and the game does start to ask a little more out of you once you understand them. The game’s final segment even starts to have some proper puzzles that take more than a second or two to figure out and multiple steps, and a few new enemy types even crop up during this single section. A brief flirt with time-pressured platforming also makes the climactic moments a bit more engaging than the rest of the adventure that can often feel like it’s offering few distinct challenges, but a single small segment doesn’t make up for the greater presence of bland platforming play, especially when the climax also features one of the worst problems with the game.

 

Gravity Falls: Legend of the Gnome Gemulets has a small handful of boss battles, but even when they are different types of creatures or even the final boss, they are all fought the same way. This is not a reductionist statement either, they all float up in the air and attack with moves Dipper needs to deflect and then switch to standing on the ground with barriers only Mable can break before they get knocked flat and you can attack their weak point. The later in the game the enemy is there will be a few more complications, the flying portion might have projectiles you can’t hit back or Mable will have to slip through a gap in a forcefield to break the enemy’s barrier, but these are all the same boss fight template recycled with no shame. Some of them make sense since they are just mild redesigns of each other but even the more unique foes just whip out the same tricks, and in a game that is already struggling to roll out new content for its regular stages, topping them off with a reused boss formula makes it feels like the game put all of its effort into capturing the look of the show while barely considering the platforming gameplay.

THE VERDICT: Gravity Falls: Legend of the Gnome Gemulets looks like a surprisingly faithful adaptation of the show, characters literally identical in appearance to how they are in the cartoon and written in-character even when hosting pointless sidequests. However, the love put into bringing the aesthetic of the show to the game is not shared with how the gameplay is handled. Platforming is often straightforward save for some mild moments of inspiration, particularly near the end, but enemies along the way are not only slow to fight but almost always yet another gnome or totem. Bosses fights are all just the same template reused but with a new trick or two added that doesn’t change it much, so while some of its normal play is harmless, it feels like the game flounders when it wants anything really involved from the player. Sadly, a delightful show with a new idea each episode and surprising depth ends up adapted into this incredibly repetitive and shallow 3DS title.

 

And so, I give Gravity Falls: Legend of the Gnome Gemulets for the Nintendo 3DS…

A BAD rating. Perhaps because of Alex Hirsch’s involvement the game was faithful to the show and all the trappings that can be seen at a glance were done well. Naturally he’d notice if the characters were written improperly and the game’s use of the impressive UbiArt Framework engine allowed the 2D art to look spot-on, but looking the part and playing the part are different beasts. It can be fun to have brief chats with familiar characters or recognize a reference only a fan would be able to identify, but this isn’t a tour of Gravity Falls and those moments are all too brief. Your experience mostly boils down to the level navigation where little collectibles are scattered around to try and give it more depth but the act of grabbing them often is such a small and quick interaction it sometimes rarely registers as a diversion from the main path. Instead you’re heading forward using your gizmos for mostly basic tasks until you find some totem or gnome who you slowly pummel before moving onto more tepid action. The area near the end of the game where the stakes are at its highest finally sees the rollout of puzzles with more substance and new foes who even sometimes fit more into the more tolerable role of platforming hindrance instead of obstruction you need to batter into submission. The bosses really hurt this moment that would otherwise be an unqualified improvement to the rest of the game, the formula already tired by then and seeing the bosses reuse it despite being different species than what you faced before just nailing in that this was either a development shortcut or a lack of creativity at play.

 

More varied bosses, more platforming challenges that match the late game designs so that they’re engaging earlier instead of only near the end, and some subquests of substance could make this a game easier to stomach if you’re just a Gravity Falls fan looking to adventure within its world. Without any interest in the series this would probably be hard to tolerate in its current state, the game’s snippets of fun dialogue perhaps all you’d have to work with before the game briefly punches up its action near the end despite squandering that goodwill with the boss fights. The truth though is that there’s very little here of substance beyond the artistry put into capturing the show’s look, and letting a mask of quality lure you into playing Gravity Falls: Legend of the Gnome Gemulets will only lead to disappointment. The mystery present in this adaptation isn’t some compelling underlying story, it’s how Ubisoft thought that players would be willing to put up with this tedious licensed adventure.