With Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted now just a few weeks away from hitting the big screen (at least in the UK - the rest of the world's had it for months before us), it would almost seem wrong if there wasn't an official video game tie-in to go with it. Luckily for us, there's no such worry, as Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted is the latest in a long line of kids film tie-in games, this time based on the upcoming film featuring the perpetually lost New York Zoo animals, Alex the Lion, Marty the Zebra, Gloria the Hippo and Melman the Giraffe, who are trying to find their way back home again, after this time getting stranded in Europe, and joining up with a travelling circus. As you do. And things get off to the best of starts - the game begins with a funny, well acted cut-scene reminiscent of the Madagascar films, with King Julien filling in the back story as only he knows how - but, sadly, before too long, things start to wear a bit thin.
Complete with tight-rope walking hypochondriac Giraffes.
Playing as one of the animal stars of the film, the vast majority of your time will be spent completing a multitude of fetch quests, wondering the streets of various European cities in search of pizzas for King Julien, locating more wood than you'd think you could possibly ever need, and pasting posters up on walls advertising the circus. With a computer controlled character accompanying you (who you can switch to at any time), you'll find each character has their own special abilities - such as Melman's floor-obliterating sneeze, and Gloria's swimming skills - which you'll need to use to get past various obstacles throughout the levels. So far, so kids film tie-in - and that's a good thing.
But while at first the missions may seem OK, with plenty of collectables waiting to be found, the sheen quickly wears off, as every level involves searching for some seemingly unrelated item or twelve. At times you're not even sure exactly what you're meant to be searching for either, and end up just wondering the streets aimlessly, only to find you've already picked up the item a while ago, and just need to head back to the start of the level to drop it off - the only problem being, nothing bothered telling you.
Boredom is one thing, but at times, the game gives way to genuine frustration (even in the tutorial of all places), which is a big problem when you consider the younger market the game's aiming at. You see, scattered around each town are a number of Animal Control wardens, whose sole reason for existence is to make your life a misery, as they do their best to catch you, putting a stop to your shoe-finding, hose-locating, fireworks-acquiring collect-a-thon. Generally speaking, they're a bit on the dopey side and lose you as quickly as they spot you (the tutorial actually mentions that all you have to do is find a ledge above their head height, and leap up there to make them lose you) - but if you end up with a pack of them surrounding you, you have no chance. And while it wouldn't be so bad if getting caught only set you back a few yards, instead, should you get caught by the wardens, you'll be plonked back at the beginning of the level, forcing you to trudge back to where you get caught, and repeat it all over again - although luckily, you do keep the items you've collected.
To it's credit, though, the game does at least have a go at including a proper, two player co-op mode, shying away from the hard-to-spot 'helper' character found in both Brave and Megamind that can do nothing but attack - but again, things still aren't quite right. With a friend taking over the role of the second character, each of whom has their own special abilities, you can at least work together to solve puzzles and progress through the levels - and, as you may imagine, finding all the items that need collecting is a lot easier with two people joining in the search. The problem is, the co-op mode just hasn't been all that well thought through. While a co-op mode's become something of a must-have for family games, it's obvious Madagascar 3's been designed with just a single player, who switches between the two characters, in mind - and while this works fine when you're playing on your own, in co-op, it often just leads to one player standing around with absolutely nothing to do, while the other player's off flicking a switch, moving a platform, or going for a dip. It's the sort of thing that's destined to make kids get bored and wonder off - and it's not much more fun for the rest of us.
In 48 hours we'll meet back and regroup. So let's shoot.
Breaking up the monotony of the collection-based levels are a selection of timed mini-games, which see you dodging from side to side to avoid the Animal Control warden that's chasing you, collecting as many balloons as possible within a time limit or sticking posters to King Julien's mango-splattered walls, which add a bit of much-needed variety to the game.
After you've explored every last nook and cranny of the city, taken part in a few minigames, and collected more logs than you could ever have use for, it's time to head to the circus, where things take a slightly different pace. To begin with, as the animal warm-up act, you're asked to complete two high-altitude platforming obstacle courses, dodging giant hammers, flipping platforms and walking across tightropes in an effort to drum up an audience for your big circus show later that night. Having attracted an audience's attention, it's time for the show to begin.
The circus show sees you performing a series of six different death-defying tricks to the big top crowd. The first, and most deadly of these, is the Ticket Sales game, which sees customers waltz up to a couple of tills, where it's up to you, a monkey with a top hat, to press the correct buttons to dispense a ticket. Oddly, though, this is a lot harder than it really needs to be, as for some strange reason, rather than popping up with the actual (on the 360) A, B, X and Y buttons you need to press, the game instead assigns each button to a type of fruit, so you need to decipher the code before you can pick the correct buttons - perhaps it's that monkeys can't read, but it just seems to make it unnecessarily complicated.
Playing as the same pair of suited monkeys, next it's time to make sure the crowds are fed and watered before the show kicks off. In much the same way as the Ticket Sales game above, it's up to you to press the right button to dispense the right fruit. Making sure you're standing in front of the correct block of the stands, mash the right button, and you'll hurl the fruit to the correct customer - pick the wrong one, and your patron will get a face full of fruit.
Once you've sold your tickets and done a spot of catering, it's time for the show to start proper, the first act of which involves Marty being shot out of a cannon and flying through a series of hoops - steering him into the balloons will net you bonus points too, although with inverted up/down controls, you'll be lucky if you pop many. Next comes the Russian lion Vitaly, featuring King Julian on drums, as he leaps through a series of flaming hoops in what is perhaps the only properly co-operative circus event - by timing King Julian's drumming/cymbal hits to Vitaly's hoop jumps, you can rack up quite a few points. Odd couple Melman and Gloria come in the penultimate act, an obstacle-dodging race across the high-wire - you'll need to jump over high-speed lemurs, dodge King Julien's melons and duck under sweeping logs on your way to the other side, popping balloons for bonus points. The final act, meanwhile, sees the king of the jungle, Alex the Lion, swinging on a series of trapezes to launch himself upwards into a field of balloons which, as always, give you extra points.
With four cities to travel through, each one littered with dozens of collectables (each character has their own set of items to locate too, lending the game some replayability), Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted is nothing if not a fairly lengthy game - but it's also very repetitive. With no real rhyme or reason to the collectathons, by the time you finally reach the circus, it's such a breath of fresh air you'll wonder if the cities have only been added as a time-sink, to make the game last longer than the hour or so the circus themed minigames would last on their own. Whilst younger players may not have too much of a problem with this (collecting twelve logs and collecting twelve posters seem to be completely different things to many children) the odds are children will get fed up of being caught by the animal wardens, adults will get fed up of the mindless collecting, and both will get fed up of the co-op that all too often leaves one player with nothing to do. While there are plenty of worse film tie-ins you could buy, there are plenty of much better ones too.
Format Reviewed: Xbox 360
