Universal Studios Theme Park Adventure

Universal Studios Theme Park places you in, you guessed it, the Universal Studios Theme Park. There are rides (mini-games) you can ride (play), and a few other inane things to do.

You'll start out (after you enter your name and select a politically correct child-character model) next to Woody Woodpecker, ready to listen to his headache-inducing voice. He tells you about the park, but if you're anything like me, you'll hold down A and scroll through the text, swiftly reading (or possibly ignoring) it just to get away. After this speech, you're set free, with little direction.

The perspective of this game is akin to that of Resident Evil. You're in a screen, in which you can walk around, with a fixed camera perspective; then when you move to another screen, by walking to the appropriate spot on the edge of your current screen, it loads the new screen in a short blur-effect, and you're in another screen with another (different angle) fixed camera perspective. However, like the aforementioned game, this suffers from some inherent flaws: if you get stuck behind something, or if you're really far away, it's nearly impossible to see where your character is. Also, the spots where you can get from one screen to another aren't entirely obvious.

Something which the game does not emphasize as much as it should is that you need points to buy things from Woody; and you need to buy things to get anywhere or do anything. You can get points by completing mini-games, and by shaking hands with Universal Studios figures (like the Creature from the Black Lagoon), but the best way by far of getting points is by picking up trash. That's right. By picking up pieces of trash on the streets, then depositing them in trash cans, you'll get a lot of points.

Oh, there's one more thing you'll ''need'': a map. A few screens away from the starting point, you'll encounter a few people (two, to be precise) who will tell you that you should get a map, and that you can get one from a guy near the entrance. So, hopefully remembering where you came from, backtrack a few screens, and get the map (side-note: if you play this game again for some reason, you'll notice that you HAVE to talk to the people a few areas away first, or the person near the entrance will not offer you a map). Not that it's particularly useful; because of the game's camera, and since the map only notes where you are and not where you're facing, there is no way to tell where you are going.

And then there's the people in the park, who number somewhere in the thousands (though there are only a dozen or so different character models), and have the collective intelligence of a pumpkin patch. They also have several inane and repetitive phrases. By the time you're done with this game, you'll be very sick of hearing ''This is exciting!'' not only because they keep saying it, but also because they're wrong.

You can get into a ride or two at the beginning without lifting a finger; but after a while, the lines fill up, and you'll need to do one of three things: get an E-pass (which will let you in one ride regardless of line, but only works once), get a Hat for a particular ride (apparently, Woody doesn't care about lines if you've got a cool hat), or go turn the game off and do something more fun, like hitting yourself in the face with a blender.

Here's an overview of each ride, mini-game, and feature of Universal Studios Theme Park:

Backdraft. A building is burning, and there are people trapped inside. The point of the game is to go through the burning building and rescue all the people. The trick is that you're not invincible, and getting hit by fire hurts you. There are hearts along the way to replenish your life, which you'll need, because sometimes getting hit is pretty hard to avoid, with the awkward camera angles. And if you miss even one of the trapped people, you lose.

Back to the Future. Imagine a racing game with one opponent who never falls behind you, and whenever he gets too far ahead, stops and waits for you. Imagine that the opponent has lines like ''What's up!'' and ''Hey, what's up!'' Imagine that the goal of the game is to crash into your opponent. This is the Back to the Future game. Biff has stolen the time-traveling DeLorean; so your goal is to race up to Biff in the other DeLorean, and knock his car out. This game has fairly impressive graphics, the levels are well done, and the whole flying car experience is nice, but a bit repetitive. It's not too bad.

E.T. Adventure. This game was challenging, but only because the controls were the most awkward thing since Janet Reno in rollerskates. This mini-game is a semi-top-down-perspective side-scroller, racing your bicycle through the streets and forests to get E.T. to the waiting spaceship in time. The intuitive controls you would think of do not work; this takes a lot of getting used to. And even if you get used to it, the level design is very unimpressive.

Jaws. Fighting giant sharks was never quite like this. You're placed on a boat, with sonar (to track Jaws), and crates. Pick up a crate. When Jaws attacks with his big gaping mouth, you need to throw the crate at him. It takes a while to perfect your timing, but after that, you'll find this game unrewardingly simple and dull.

Jurassic Park. This game puts you in the back of the Jurassic Park humvee, and you get to shoot at dinosaurs with a laser gun while the humvee is driven along (not by you). Almost all you do is use the A button to shoot, or hold it down to charge a shot. There's also an awkward targeting system, but I won't go into that. Despite the fact that the laser seems to be more powerful than the entire continent of Eurasia, you'll have a lot of trouble taking down velociraptors, because even if you think you've hit them, they can easily avoid being shot due to their speed. Overall, this is almost a fun game, if you can cope with the horrible accuracy.

Waterworld. Let's clarify something from the start: this is not a game. In the Waterworld ride, you choose one of five spots in the semicircular bleachers from which to see the event (the viewing angle changes), and then watch a scene from the movie Waterworld. As if this fact in itself was not enough to steer you away, they pull it off really badly. The graphics are good, with the fire and water splashing effects; but it isn't exciting, or even interesting. It's just a seaplane crashing through a barrier and splashing onto the water. Then flames shoot up, and it's over in 7.9 seconds of pointlessness.

Wild Wild Wild West. In this game, you compete with a computer (or second player) controlled gunslinger, trying to shoot down as many targets as possible in a western town. Not only is this game neither wild, wild, nor wild, but the controls have sensitivity issues. It's not bad, but gets dull.

The Quiz. Run by ''Winnie Woodpecker,'' this mini-game is a quiz about Universal Studios movies. It was a long time before I started seeing duplicate questions, though there were also a few typoes I noticed. During the quiz, I was very tempted to curse loudly at my television, due to the obscure and inane questions (my friend said ''hectares....what the **** is a hectare?''). And after failing the quiz, the woodpecker says ''You need to watch more movies'' in positively the most infuriating way possible.

15 Puzzle. Like everyone's old love-to-hate slide puzzle, this mini-game gives you a slide puzzle of a selected size (3x3 blocks, 4x4, or 5x5) to re-arrange into a picture. As with real slide puzzle games, unless you know how to do this, it is entirely possible that this game will drive you to smash your head into a brick wall.

Concentration. Finally, a game that makes sense! Just like the old Concentration game, and just as simple. Sadly, this is one of the best games that Universal Studios Theme Park has to offer.

''Universal Studios'' letters. Throughout the park, you may see letters laying on the ground (they look sorta like trash, only gold-colored). Walk over them to collect them; it'll fill in a letter of ''UNIVERSAL STUDIOS,'' and you'll get some points. You get a stamp if you get all the letters.

Stamps. Collect stamps from the mini-games. Blue stamps are for completing them, and Red stamps are for doing them well (in Medium and Hard difficulties). After you get all the (blue) stamps, you can see the ''Hollywood Magic Show,'' which is a bunch of badly-animated fireworks, and a cheesy excuse for an ending. If want to see what happens after you get all the Red stamps, knock yourself out; I personally didn't have the patience to do so.

Some of the mini-games are insultingly simple, while others are insultingly impossible. The music throughout the park is poorly done, and very mentally tiring at times. The sound effects are repetitive and annoying, and the spoken voices are just plain irritating. The graphics are good sometimes, mediocre most of the time, and horrible the rest of the time. Replay value in this game doesn't exist, since there's no new challenges after one time through, and the old ones are things you just don't want to do again. Fun factor is low to none. This game appears to be geared towards kids, but I'm not sure if they'd enjoy it much either, with the massive park to meander through. And there's another thing I'm wondering about - this game is rated Teen. I was surprised when Super Smash Bros. Melee earned a Teen, though it is about fighting, after all; but this one just doesn't make sense. And if the game is for Teens, then why in the name of Miyamoto are all the characters you can select small children?!

Another minor feature that bugs me is that you need to save the game manually. Unlike most Gamecube games I've seen/played so far, where saves are automatic or you're prompted to save after doing something, you need to select Save from the menu and manually save your game here. This is just a little thing, but every little thing adds up.

Overall, this game should not have been made. I'd like to hope that anyone who was able to purchase a Gamecube Development Kit would have some talent at making games; it is clear that Universal Studios Theme Park does not show this in any way. I'm impressed with how they managed to make so many different game engines for the mini-games, but it's too bad they're almost all horrible games.

Bottom Line: Do not buy this game. Do not rent this game. If you are offered this game by someone, run away. This game might have been successful if it was used as a demo game to show off what the Gamecube can do, because it has a variety of mini-games; but again, even if it was for demo only, there's still the problem that the park is too big. If for some reason, you play this game and like it, then I wish you the best of luck; but I highly urge you against that, because there are better things you can do with your time, like writing letters to government officials asking to make the grass pink.

Progress: Complete