Yawn. Another title by Imagine released too soon. What are they up to at this point - a new game every other week? (You know I'm right.) And yet...I keep buying into it. When will I ever learn? (Probably never.)
Much like the Animal Doctor title in this series, the animation style is severely lacking in this game. Here is one of my biggest issues with Imagine... They need to pick a look, and go with it across the board. Period. Regardless of which one they pick. Having it be totally different from game to game makes it really hard to adjust and get a feel for the whole line at all. Where's our false sense of security? Oh, right. We don't get one.
Animation style aside, I made another painfully obvious observation: Almost EVERY single person who walks into the practice is HIDEOUS, while your character looks like frickin' Malibu Barbie rather than a doctor, and her best friend looks like she should be rallying at some type of Greenpeace event. Stereotypical much? One of her mentors is an extremely stereotypical Chinese man, and the bane of her existence whom she dreads going to for anything, but often has to for new equipment - stereotypical bitchy Jew. Not even kidding.
Speaking of new equipment - shoudn't a fresh out of med school physician already have all the necessary equipment to perform an exam? I don't know about you, but I wouldn't try a doctor who hasn't even got all the most basic exam instruments in their office. Who is this quack? Even past that, you always get the same few ailments over and over again, which grows stale reaaaaaally fast. Trust me.
Whilst you're performing these monotonous exams, it won't take you very long to discover that unless you write down your numbers a VERY specific way, it won't count them as being correct, and will come up with something not even close to what you wrote down. One of the biggest culprits is the number 8, and it didn't like my 4's much either. Cutting and affixing bandages is difficult when it tells you that you're not accurately following the lines when you are. And the tongue depresser exam, oh! Don't even get me started! Supposedly, all you have to do is say "ahh" into the microphone to make the patient open their mouth. I think on the low end, I had to try at least 3 times in different octaves to even make this work. (Which always resulted in funny looks from other people in the same room.) Not exactly my idea of fun. I don't think you even end up using every single medication available to you, and then when you are administering meds, you have the option of one, two, or three doses to put on the chart each time. Not ONCE do you ever give out 3. Why is the option even there?
The dialogue clicks through far too easily when you don't want it to, and when you DO want it to, the people blather on endlessly about things you don't particularly want to hear about. Add in a ton of pointless side storylines that have absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with being a doctor, and you have this game wrapped up in a nutshell. And to think... you never even get to dole out a single injection.
In my opinion, this game fails pretty hardcore. I'm going to give it 2 1/2 stethescopes...mostly just because it drove me so insane.
Where popular character faces and video games meet, it's almost a sure bet that at some point, somebody's going to end up jumping on a bandwagon. Shrek Superslam unfortunately falls into this category, which is a disappointment.
All of you remember Super Smash Brothers for N64, I'm sure. And anyone who played it fell into one of either two categories, with no real in between: those who thought the game was FRIGGING AWESOME, and those who thought it was a pretty stupid plotless, mindless fighting game. (I fell into one category, and all my siblings and cousins fell into the other. Perhaps I'm missing something.) This game is exactly the same way. Same type of premise and everything. You pick your fighter, and you get placed in different scenarios to fight, fight, fight! There's items (just like in SSB) that you can pick up and fight with, and....that's about it. There's a VERY loose attempt at a storyline, but it falls pretty flat. It's a tiny little sequence where the kids are being read a bedtime story, and whichever character you pick as a fighter takes on this story, which apparently is nothing more than the fight scenes. (I would imagine this would work kids up rather than put them to sleep, but I digress.) Working your way through all the levels doesn't even take very long! I was pretty let down that that was all there was to the game.
So, if you were a fan of SSB, you might dig this. If not, don't waste your time, it's essentially the same thing. I'll give it 4 out of 10 Shreks.
You know, I'm not ashamed (much) to admit that of all the modern Disney shows I'm still subjected to having to watch thanks to sharing a home with a 10 year old, "The Suite Life of Zack & Cody" is by far the easiest to sit through and actually enjoy. (The same cannot be said of its spin-off show, but that topic doesn't belong in this blog.) I actually got kind of excited when I found out there were a couple of games out for it! But, once again, I was disappointed by another show-turned-videogame title.
This was even less playable than the Animaniacs game, and only a tiny bit more playable than "The Wild West". UGH. My first indicator was upon first starting up the game to find out the animation style is SO bad, it looks more like this game should have been "Dennis the Menace". 
As it so happens, the gameplay also seems more like something Dennis would pull, rather than the Martin twins.
Truth be told? I made it maybe one level in before deciding this game is TERRIBLE. I mean this is *bad* bad. Even looking past the character animation, I thought MAYBE, just maybe, there would be some interesting level exploration in the seemingly 3-D hotel. But nooooo... You're stuck to a VERY thin track that's not far off from being a 2-D scroller game. (Mmhmm. Told you it was bad.) It allows for pretty much NO original exploration. The abilities are fairly stupid. I can usually put up with anything most games dish out, but this is in a league all of its own as far as terrible games go.
It's bad enough to where I can't even rate this. All I can say is not to waste your time or money on this title. Even die-hard fans would be insulted by this one.
Yet another Hannah Montana DS game. (Does anybody know what ever ended up happening with "Hannah Montana: Pop Star Exclusive"? I'm beginning to think it doesn't really exist. Never shows up on Ebay, can't find anywhere online that sells it, can't even find anyone who's PLAYED it. And there aren't even any roms of it online to download. I'm seriously doubting its legitimacy...) This time, based on Hannah Montana: The Movie. (Which I'm not ashamed to admit I went and saw and was surprisingly pretty good.)
The animation style in this one has improved from the past 2 games. Most of the characters look way more realistic this time around. And the music? KUDOS to Disney for FINALLY using the ACTUAL Hannah songs in the game! I was expecting the lame MIDI-sounding versions of the songs again, but nope, they found a way to fit the actual songs in there this time :) In their entireties, even!
Plotwise, meh, the game's lacking. They leave out a LOT of crucial points in the storyline. Ones big enough to probably make the game not even make sense in quite a few places. And then gives much bigger amounts of attention to places that BARELY even were mentioned in the movie - that didn't even really concern Hannah! Not to mention, the layout of the farmhouse (and the ranch in general) was EXQUISITE.
I have compiled a list of ways in which I think this game could be improved. Take note, Disney, in case you ever decide to put out another Hannah game (even though I think Mileymania is dying out):
- If you're basing a game off an episode or a movie in particular, follow the plot more closely. I know, you can't include everything, but this was a really poor attempt, guys.
- When you're playing the instruments in the game during the songs, actually have the notes match up with what's being played instead of just being random notes.
- Have a playback option when you finish the songs so you can watch the dance sequences.
- Four words: TYRA BANKS SHOE FIGHT.
- Include Lilly's birthday party.
- Give a run option to cut down on the time it takes to travel from one place to the next.
- Reduce the amount of time wasted on Jackson's storyline
- Have more songs in the game to be unlocked! Honestly... They included Robbie Ray at the gazebo, but didn't have that Butterfly song?
- Include the Lorelei storyline
- Have more happen in detail with the running back and forth between the dinner with the mayor and Miley's date.
- Make the wi-fi chatroom option actually WORK.
I completed the entire game in about 2 hours, tops. While multitasking on instant messenger and checking emails. I feel the game itself should have probably been longer, but you can't have everything. It's not a bad game, but there's definite room for improvement. I'm rating this game a 7.5 out of 10 butterflies.
Yawn. Another title by Imagine released too soon. What are they up to at this point - a new game every other week? (You know I'm right.) And yet...I keep buying into it. When will I ever learn? (Probably never.)
