To coincide with the latest movie release Rise of the Guardians, Torus Games have developed a video game of the same name. Movie tie-in games are usually hit and miss for me, however as this is aimed at kids it’ll no doubt go down well for those who have seen it. So shall we see if a game featuring most of our childhood legends can be a force against evil?
The premise is that Pitch (Bogeyman) is threatening children everywhere using his darkness to eradicate the belief in all popular Guardians. These consist of North (Santa Claus), Tooth (Tooth Fairy), Sandy (Sandman), Bunnymund (Easter Bunny) and the new recruit Jack Frost who is rather disillusioned since children had already stopped believing in him. They must work together, combine their strengths to take on and take down the evil Pitch, thus restoring belief in humanity of their existence.
It’s an action/adventure game essentially, featuring only a story mode from the beginning of you playing through. The idea is to travel to different realms of the world, defeating Pitch’s incarnations of dark enemies. I like the fact you can start in any of them and move about between them at any travel gates, meaning you don’t have to finish off a realm if you’re getting bored of it you can move on and come back later. Throughout the game it allows the use of any of the five main characters who each have their own unique weapon of choice, for example North has a sword and Bunnymund has magical boomerangs. In addition to this and a basic melee style attack with it there are three ability attacks to unlock as you play, these are special moves that use energy so you can’t spam them! To give you an idea, some of the better ones are North shoulder charging around like a battering ram and Sandy who sends a sandstorm. If you haven’t guessed from my constant mentioning of him, North was by far my favourite as he is a beast.
One thing I’ve glossed over and should mention is that all the characters you aren’t using actually are fighting with you all the way, so there’s never a chance for you to be isolated and at any point you can switch using the d-pad (due to the zoomed out overhead look you can nearly always see the whole team). By defeating enemies you gain XP to level up the characters, not just you though as the rest of your team are fighting too, gaining valuable experience. Thumbs up from me as there are few things worse than using a certain character and then fancying a change only to find you have to start from scratch ability-wise. As you increase levels you can assign points to increase Belief (health), Speed, Energy, Strength etc. The dark and devilish enemies also drop gems when you have slayed them, which are used to buy Gem perks such as gem boosts or melee attack bonuses.
You’ll visit five realms, each of which has a link to their respective guardian. A small town, a sandy ship, the North Pole, plenty of visual variety within them however some are rather confusing to navigate when it’s on different floors of a level. The idea is not just to erase the darkness in these but also to complete each are 100% there are a few objectives to meet. Ranging from collecting Russian dolls or opening treasure chests to protecting vulnerable allies (whilst waves of enemies swarm in) or helping caged friends to escape, I don’t think I’ve ever had this much fun trying to find everything. Pretty sure the easily accessible map that shows you where it all is had nothing to do with it... I lied; it avoided a certain frustration for sure.
There isn’t much direction from the game, it’s just do what you want which will suit the young gamers. It is more like keep going doing as many missions and different ones until enough belief is restored to require a pop up from the main man Pitch. You will fight him quite a few times, what I will say is these battles are unbalanced, mainly due to the easiness of all but one. This one ends up being extremely tough in comparison, caught me off guard and needs a bit of strategic planning to overcome. However with a little help from friends (you can have up to three join you on the same console) it should be no problem.
Once everything is complete (takes around 8 hours), a Challenge mode will then unlock to add a bit more substance to the game. Actually it doesn’t, basically a last as long as you can survival type against hordes of enemies with no ending, I lasted so long that I ended up letting them deplete my health.
Despite being pretty much a one trick pony (Story mode), for as long as it lasts it never becomes a slog or chore and I reckon the changeable realms/characters will surely prevent an onset of boredom. For parents I’ll say if your child enjoys the film, buy the game. For older gamers, buy the game if you fancy something a little less challenging but gives off a little sparkle before holiday period begins (and to add a simple 1000 Gamerscore to your list of achievements).
