Shrek Forever After (Wii) Review

Alleged swansong of the Shrek series, Forever After is the latest Shrek film and game combo looking to milk what’s left of the last remaining assets of an overplayed family film series. The movie itself hasn’t received an overwhelming response but that won’t stop a similar quality game tie-in released for every modern gaming platform under the sun.

Attempting to follow the events of the movie with four main characters playable, Shrek Forever After puts a bit more effort in than your standard movie tie-in brawler. Sure it’s repetitive, short and simple, but compared to most other games based on family movies, Shrek Forever After can actually be enjoyable in parts.

Shrek Forever After is a narrow level-by-level brawler seemingly designed for multiplayer with a mix between combat and puzzles. The puzzles do a nice job of breaking up the monotonous combat with some even requiring two players for co-operation. Combat itself is average; each character controls well with a few abilities to level up and upgrade at a store. The biggest problem is it’s just too easy, with any battle winnable by simply mashing the A Button in an enemy’s general direction.

The multiplayer component is pretty neat, allowing up to three other players to join in on-the-fly through the full single-player campaign. Each player will control one of the four heroes which can be somewhat novel for a group of Shrek fans.

Players can switch between the playable characters of Shrek, Fiona, Donkey and Puss in Boots on-the-fly. Each character has different abilities, different attributes and a special move to help navigate the environment. Set in the wonderful world of Far Far Away, the game does follow locations from the film but makes very little attempt to bridge or explain events. Having not seen the feature film I was thrown straight into a predicament involving Shrek signing some form of contract. For some reason he had lost his body but hasn’t now, and he’s looking to find information on Fiona yet Fiona is an instantly swappable party member right from the start.

The story makes no sense but it could have if a bit more effort was put into properly editing cutscenes and dialogue. Having not seen the film, there was a lot of guessing throughout the adventure. The cutscenes look like they’ve been ripped straight from the film, looking very professional albeit brief; dialogue is appropriated in much the same way, ripping contextual quotes from the film randomly, creating some awkwardly timed and abrupt conversations.

Shrek Forever After suffers a lot in production values. If more time was spent presenting the world and story in a more progressive manner, there could have been a magical experience to play through here, but everything just happens too quickly with no explanation.

Shrek Forever After is by no means a great game, but it is sure better than most movie tie-ins out there. It far surpassed my expectations, which wasn’t exactly difficult, but it packed a few nice surprises. If you’re a big Shrek fan and have some family members for multiplayer, then this might be right for you as some cheap disposable gaming to make the kids happy.

Graphics 5.0

Some decent character models can cause a strain on the frame rate in intense action.

Gameplay 5.5

Good controls but mundane, repetitive combat. RPG elements and puzzles nearly save it.

Sound 7.0

Dialogue from the movie could have been used much better. The use of the licensed soundtrack is nice.

Tilt 4.5

This is quite a short game even with some hidden items to collect.

Value 6.0

Better than expected but worse than it should be.