It’s Adventure Time!
Developer: WayForward Technologies
Publisher(s): Little Orbit, Bandai Namco
Format: PC, Playstation 3, Xbox 360 and 3DS
Release Date: November, 2014
Everyone’s favourite human and inflatable dog are back, in yet another video-game adventure through the mysterious land of Oooooooohhh actually, it’s a completely new kingdom!
Officially labeled Adventure Time: The Secret of the Nameless Kingdom, this new release sees our heroes exploring a brand new location that has been created specifically for this game. However, they will bump into a lot of familiar faces such as the Ice King, Lady Rainicorn and Lumpy Space Princess.
This is the third game in the Adventure Time! series and the first with new developer Little Orbit. The last console release, Adventure Time: Explore the Dungeon because I DON’T KNOW! received largely negative reviews due to repetitive gameplay and boring combat. Even the story, which is generally of high quality in the TV series, was not enough to save this game from the critics.
And while we are willing to give this new installment the benefit of the doubt, it sounds a little too familiar in terms of style…
Once again, the game will follow a top-down perspective and, though the previous game was described as a dungeon crawler hack n’ slash, this one labels itself as an adventure game with puzzle elements. A description that neatly fits the hack n’ slash model, minus the dungeon.
It really is the ‘top-down’ part of the description that is so bothersome. It implies this will be a largely game-based experience, one where the humour of the show will be restricted to the very odd cut-scene, and maybe a dialogue box or two. And if you’re going to take the humour away from the game, it hardly makes sense for it to wear the Adventure Time! moniker at all.
This was all but confirmed by the lack of actual game footage we were shown.
Cleverly, Namco simply pushed TV show clips and promo videos featuring Finn and Jake at us, hoping we wouldn’t notice the lack of even a game trailer. It was actually an effective way to lull us into a false sense of security, but it has since worn off.
Adventure Time! truly is a franchise that can sell itself using its name alone. It is, after all, one of the most popular children’s shows of all time.
But let’s be optimistic. Let’s hope that Little Orbit can spin something truly fun and memorable out of Adventure Time!
Hey…c’mon, grab your friends. We’ll go to very distant lands…
Adventure Time: The Secret of the Nameless Kingdom is set for release in November 2014
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