Gravity Falls – Legend of the Gnome Gimlets (3DS) Review

While the 90s kid crowd talk about how ‘Recess’ was the best cartoon ever, and force themselves to believe that Pepper Anne was enjoyable, Disney have been continuing to produce animated TV series for a younger audience. While live-action series are a much more common medium from Disney at the time of writing, their traditional 2D animated series prove to be a hit amongst children and Tumblr users. Shows like ‘Phineas and Ferb’ and ‘Gravity Falls’ are proving to be popular, created and written by people infused with the love for irreverence that youth culture absorbs itself into. With that said, I’m a grown-ass adult that loves Gravity Falls. The writing is clever, the science-fiction/super-natural aspects and the ever deepening lore that shrouds the location of Gravity Falls keeps me invested. So when they announced ‘Gravity Falls: Legend of the Gnome Gemulet’ was coming on 3DS and built in the UbiArt engine I was very excited

The game is a sidescroller, playing with Dipper and Mabel Pines from the show through not overly difficult platforming challenges while collecting items scattered through each of the five stages. It has that classic licensed-SNES game deal where you need to collect 3-5 stage specific items for Stan to appear and let you enter a boss fight. Each stage is full of collectables that you gather and deliver to the townspeople from Gravity Falls. This gives the game longevity, requiring return visits once you unlock more abilities. Even with all the tools available in the game, I have struggled with finding some of the townsfolk’s lost items.  Dipper has a torch that can be used to solve puzzles while Mabel is given her grappling-hook, as seen throughout the series. Both of the twin’s tools upgrade as you progress through the story, allowing the player to gather collectables for the townspeople. The game will throw you up against sections where you must split to two up, switching between the two to pass through an area.

The bottom screen has the Journal on it as you play the game. It provides a nice addition while playing, containing hints on how to defeat enemies as well as info for items and quests. The hint button is accessible throughout the game via the touchscreen when encountering an environmental object you could interact with, but would occasionally give a hint for a different type of object.

The game is graphically beautiful, really capturing the essence of the show with each sprite. The animations are stock-standard but look very nice nonetheless. But the game really pops when the 3D is turned on, providing one of the best looking sidescrollers in 3D on the 3DS. UbiArt engine’s ability to layer predrawn images and insert them into a diorama-esque setting is nicely done, though some layers are placed awkwardly causing it to warp with the camera’s perspective on the player. The most noticeable moment of this was when the moss on a tree with drawn separate to the tree, layered in such a way it would turn as you run past it. I also found in areas with a background that you can jump to, playing in 3D does cause a stutter in the frame-rate.

There are a lot of artefacts from the Rayman games that were carried over in the UbiArt engine. Jumping has the same floatiness. The most striking return were water physics from Rayman. However, there is no swimming; you just wade through the water as it moves around the character with basic physics. It’s impressive to look at on the 3DS, but for the two patches of water you can walk through it’s just oddly placed.

The choices of certain facial animations feel off at times, not really matching the mood. Because you’re running most of the game for speed and to make jumps, the fact that Dipper and Mabel are constantly frowning is often out of place. When Dipper is doing his flashlight ‘puzzle’ I thought he was giving more an about to climax face than a quizzical one.

However, this wasn’t much of a problem considering the camera would zoom out, making it hard to see the sprites. This very rarely affected the action sections of the game, but when it did happen

I couldn’t help but reflect on the poorly received 3DS version of Rayman Origins. However, the game’s self-controlling camera is plenty active and there shouldn’t be too many gripes with its placement in relation to things going around off screen.

Spores are used to purchase upgrades from the twins. Their lack of animation looks out of place when they show up on the screen, a frequent reminder of a licensed game’s lower budget. They do have that purple chaining collection like Rayman Legends, with the last spore collected giving 4 spores if collected in order. The upgrading system involves trading your spores with Old Man McGucket, allowing you to upgrade your attack up 2 levels, health up 4 levels.

A number of stages would have the collectables backwards from the character’s starting point. It took me a while to realise how common this was, requiring me to complete levels I had recompleted with all the tools and abilities to collect the ones I missed. So yes, it’s one of those types of games; a real sneaky bugger.

You travel between worlds via a map of Gravity Falls. An icon appears above areas where you are supposed to go next in your story. If you have enough spores to purchase an upgrade, an icon of Old Man McGucket will appear about the Junkyard. There are also special areas drawn on the map that reference episodes from the series can be tapped on for bonus spores.

Enemy difficulty increases throughout the game, adding variation to projectiles for Dipper to volley back or creating auras requiring Mabel’s charged sleeve-whip in the later levels.
The designs of enemies are just reusing of assets with palette swaps, with a few variations to allow them to fly or shoot fire.  Enemies have an animation to show you which direction they’ll attack before attacking. I found occasions where I’d jump over and suddenly they’d continue attacking the the same direction but I would take damage. Enemy knockback is ridiculous, however bottomless pits are hard to come by and unless you’re super unlucky (like me) you probably won’t fall down one. It’s not a big problem, as checkpoints are quite regular.

All the bosses are recolourings of each other and follow a reflect attack strategy, a force-field strategy or a mixture of both. It gets boring fast, especially when there’s one at the end of every level and the levels aren’t that long to begin with. All up it took me about 5 hours to reach the final boss, with an estimated extra hour to go back and collect every collectable. It’s definitely not the shorted licensed game on the 3DS, nor the shortest game of its genre but at the AU$40 price tag it’s hard to recommend.

Music while playing is often out of place, though it fits the mood of the pacing but not necessarily the environment. A lot of the music doesn’t feel like it’s been in the show and has a ‘the composer listened to one episode and slapped together a water theme and a cave theme’ sort of vibe. The show’s title theme is looped in a lot of places, not looping smoothly but ending and starting again. During the credits it proves to be quite an annoyance.

Licensed games take many forms, and for me the lack of voice acting really makes this fact show. While text in the game feels like it could have been written by some of the show’s writers, the game overall would’ve felt a lot more like an episode of the show rather than something forced. While the show is known for its clever use of ciphers, when Jeff the gnome chants gnomish the use of the Caesar cipher just seems contrived and out of place. When it’s deciphered there isn’t a small nod to the player, it’s what would make sense if actually there, but with randomly placed contraction marks. The references in the game go up to around halfway through season 2, meaning that the game will likely age poorly considering how fast the TV show’s lore develops.

But plain and simple, as with most licensed games of this type, the game is fan-service. Visual gags, references in text, it’s what fans will love. But anyone who wants to see more of Ubisoft’s beloved UbiArt engine without being a fan of the show will be in for a stale, and borderline unpleasant time.

Review concludes below.