Planet 51: The Game

The premise of Planet 51 holds so much potential for a fun animated romp: Instead of the usual scary green alien coming to invade poor defenseless earth, this time it's a human who has landed on an alien planet, striking fear into the hearts of the peaceful inhabitants. Add in some great voice talent (including Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson, Justin Long and Seann William Scott) and the now standard array of quirky characters, and you've got the recipe for some wholesome animated holiday fun. That's the movie covered. Now take the movie, tear out its charming soul and replace it with repetitive fetch-quests, bland voice acting and clumsy controls, and you are left with Planet 51: The Game.

In the worst tradition of animated film licences, you spend most of your time taking part in a number of increasingly boring and/or frustrating mini-games, loosely linked together by snippets of storyline which do very little to explain why you are doing the things you are doing. There is a story here, there has to be, since this is based on a movie, but it's hard to pin down. See, that's something I just can't understand about these games based on children's movies these days... it was the same thing with Disney/Pixar's Up, the developer has a wealth of story building tools to use to set the scene, but instead you are just dropped into the gameworld with hardly any idea of context, or back story. Yes, there is the occasional cut-scene with footage from the film, but it is so random that you need Sherlock Holmes-like powers of deductive reasoning to make sense of it.

The basic idea is that you are Lem, an alien teenager, and you... well, you live in a town and you help your fellow townspeople with their dull tasks in exchange for stickers and sticker albums to stick them in. Things hot up a bit later with the arrival of Chuck the 'alien', but first you need to use your Jedi-like powers of focus and determination to get through the early tasks without brain trauma. You'll spend way too much time mowing the lawn for your neighbour (for stickers), delivering newspapers (for stickers), and delivering boxes across town (yes, more stickers). Every now and then you will be forced to chase someone who stole something, or race someone who challenged you, but these sequences do little to spice things up. This is mainly because controlling the hover-bikes and hover-cars is a rather painful experience in itself. Which is a problem, because most of the game has you stuck in one of these bloody awful vehicles. They are slow and clumsy, and the distances you need to cover are sometimes so vast you will soon be praying for some kind of teleport function. On the other hand, it beats walking. But only just barely. You will spend a lot of time crashing into invisible walls, crashing into oncoming traffic because of extreme jump lag (admittedly, I don't know a whole lot about hover physics, so maybe this isn't completely accurate), and really just swerving around like a drunk clown in a bumper car.

The quests are also a mixed bag with regards to the level of challenge. Some are so ridiculously easy, which you would expect from a game of this nature, while others are genuinely tricky. Unfortunately, they are tricky because of the dodgy controls, which makes it far more frustrating. Getting the difficulty just right for a target audience can't be easy, but I think that a child would quickly lose interest with some of the side missions here.

Anyway, so a few unexplained cut-scenes later, and Chuck arrives. "Oh cool, The Rock did his voice! The Rock is cool!" I hear you exclaim. Except that you are wrong. Yes, in the film this wholesome Yankee space pilot was indeed voiced by Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, but not here in game land, sorry folks. Same goes for the rest of the characters as far as I could tell. No Jessica Biel, no Justin Long, just a couple of throwaway voice overs from people you've probably never heard of. Anyway, so Chuck arrives, bringing with him a couple more silly side missions, like hiding in dustbins to escape the authorities and so on. There isn't much in the way of character progression for him either, but it does add some variety to the proceedings, which by this time are getting a little stale. One more playable side character makes an appearance, Rover the robot, who is also little more than a diversion. In fact, some of the side missions do more damage than good, because they seem to have so little to do with the story itself.

If you can get past the fact that it's not the original actors doing the voice work, you will find the characters quite likeable, if a little one dimensional. Also, there isn't any real sense of tension and menace, even when the 'evil' government is on your tail, so this helps to add a relaxed child-friendly atmosphere to the game.

One thing which Pyro Studios has done well is the pleasant nature of the environments, at least at first. Keeping in mind that Planet 51 is aimed at younger gamers, there is a lot here to grab your attention. The suburbs are bright and colourful, with cute touches here and there. There is also a lot to explore, especially if you want to collect all the hidden comic book pages and stickers. The problem is that as an adult it gets old pretty fast. Once you've done the rounds in the first section of town, it becomes a case of exploring as little as possible just to get the job done. But then again, I think that kids will have fun cruising around town for quite some time. The areas are really quite big, even if the same sort of things are repeated often, and there are also winding mountain roads connecting the different sections. It's also this scale that gets in the way, with some missions having you going back and forth between sizeable sections maybe three or four times.

In terms of sound and music, there isn't a lot to report. The soundtrack is your standard cartoony affair, harmless and unobtrusive, and the effects are serviceable but nothing more. Oh, except for the music which plays from within each passing hover car... It's the same thing, over and over - the beginning of one of maybe three different tracks. It's hard to explain, but it really got to me.

The story never really gains momentum as it should, and it feels like Pyro Studios has dropped the ball here considering they had a whole movie worth of story to play with. Chopping bits of film footage in here and there is just not enough to keep narrative momentum going, especially when you are trying to hold onto the waning attention of a child. There really needed to be more opportunity for the player to make decisions in the game, maybe not to alter to course of the story but at least to make it feel like that was some interaction with the game world. Yes, it's colourful and inviting at first, and the charm of the film still does shine through in some small ways, but once you get under the skin it becomes a real chore to keep playing.

Perhaps I'm giving younger gamers too much credit by thinking they deserve better, that they can handle a more complex game and story line. Maybe shunting a wobbly hover-bike back and forth across the same unchanging landscapes is exactly what today's kiddies are after in a game. But if I was a parent and my own child had to point this game out to me in a store today, I would consider chopping his or her pudgy little fingers off. Planet 51 is not a terrible game, but there are far more entertaining games out there to keep your little ones happy.

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