When I heard I would be given the chance to have a hands on the new Ice Age game, I was excited. Knowing that it was Kinect compatible it was a game I was thinking of getting for my daughter at some point.
The game, which is Published by Activision, was released on the 10th of July 2012.
The game menu is basic and you can go straight into the story line or choose to play a friend via the freeplay option or start a new tournament against friends. As usual, options to adjust game settings are available.
Since my daughter was about, I thought I would let her have a go and selected freeplay. Here various events are available to choose from at difference Arctic games. We chose Mountain Drift. I thought it would be a nice easy game for her to start with. When loading the game tells you how to play. It was obvious that leaning left and right would be the main action of this game as she would be controlling Granny Sloth while skiing down hill through gates and collecting acorns at the same time. The aim was to finish the run in the shortest time possible.
I really hate to say this, but the game didn’t last long. Before it was even half way, she walked away from the game. Reason, “Its broken and not working”. I thought perhaps she’s doing it wrong or the Kinect needed re-calibration. So I decided to take the reins and have a go (hopefully proving her wrong by showing her how its played). Unfortunately, I didn’t have much luck either. Its basic. Apart from leaning left and right, you only need to thrust your arms backwards to give yourself more momentum to speed up. Control is poor. Steering your character to a gate is a tough task if you are slightly late. Collecting Acorns along the way as well as Ruby Acorns will reduce your overall time at the end. And although the acorns are along the way, I still ended up collecting about 5 from the available 20-30 or so (I didn’t really count). Oh yes, plus 1 Red Ruby Acorn which was a total fluke.
Disappointed with this, I thought I would go into the story line and maybe the game would save itself some embarrassment.
If you have seen Ice Age 4 then you will not have a problem recognising the characters involved (The Herd & Pirates) in any part of the game. The story line is simple again. The herd (Manny, Diego, Sid & Elly) are walking along enjoying and appreciating their current lifestyle. At this point, I must mention that, graphically, you shouldn’t expect the characters to look like the way they do in the movie. There is a great similarity, but something makes them look strange. Anyway, back to the game. Sid being his normal self, ends up slipping down a cliff, rolling & tumbling while his friends watch him from the top of the cliff debating on who should go and save him. He finally ends up bumping into a gigantic acorn which has a lot of fruit collected in it. Where this came from? Who collected it? Well, that’s not important. Sid is excited and calls it “Treasure”. The rest of the herd hear his excitement and come down immediately to his rescue.
In the mean time, one of the Pirates ends up crashing into this treasure as a snowball and claims he found it. You can see whats coming. A fight over who has the right over the Treasure. The Pirates suggest a range of Pirate Arctic Games which is a favourite Pirate Tradition. Theres no arguing against them as Manny gives in too easily.
You then go through each game with a small cut scene after each one. To show the celebration of a victory or the dismay of a loss. The games include: Slip Slide, Style Jump, Shell Slide, Prehistoric Plumber, and quite the list goes on. To give you a brief idea of what some of the games are about:
Slip slide; basic sliding down through a network of ice tunnels collecting acorns along the way. The tunnels have arrows on the ground at certain points which give you a boost of speed. Again acorns reduce overall time taken.
Shell slide; take a pre-historic turtle and play Curling with it. That’s the best way I can put it. Aim for a target and get as close as possible to it.
Pre-Historic Plumber; an ice wall is cracking. You controls Scrat and need to plug each hole up using your hands and feet.
Although I managed to get through most of the games, It was extremely frustrating. Most of the time the movement and response was awful. I managed to persevere going through the pointless cut scenes without skipping through them with a hope that I will get some sort of story out of it or even something to encourage me to play on. However that never came.
To sum it up, the game feels like it has no heart or soul put into it. It may seem extremely harsh to say something like that, but the main aim of every game is to try and get the gamer to actually carry on playing it. Try giving the game a chance. Especially with the kids. However, I don’t see it staying in the tray or getting a second chance either. Sorry Activision, not one of your best games out there on the market.
Based on my experience, I would give the game a rating of 2/10. It only gets that because of the idea behind the Herd vs Pirates. Simply put, it needs a complete overhaul to get anywhere near some other Kinect titles on the market at the moment.
As always, a massive thanks goes out to our friends over at XCN (Xbox Community Network) for letting us have a hands on.