Review: Mushroom Men
By Chris CesaranoAs the rest of the “hardcore” gamer crowd, I found myself bypassing Wii titles the past year in favor of high-budget titles for the Xbox 360. One of the games I passed over was Mushroom Men: Spore Wars, a rather creative looking platformer featuring sentient fungi.
The premise of the game is there simply to develop an interesting world. A slew of green meteorites hit the Earth and had seemingly no effect to anything on the planet, but has in fact developed odd behaviors in animals and turned mushrooms into living creatures. A few breeds of mushroom became aggressive and started to horde away chunks of meteorite, while also wiping out a tribe of Bolete mushrooms. One of the last of his kind, you play as the hero Pax, a unique little guy that can absorb the meteorite pieces to develop telekinetic style powers.
These levels are huge Rochester! HUGE!
The game was given pretty low review scores from several publications, something that comes off to me as ridiculous. The game is technically a platformer, but it doesn’t play like your typical game still trying to imitate Super Mario 64. The most basic feature is the item collection, which becomes encouraged as finding chunks of meteorite boost your powers while uncovering scavenged items help you build more weapons. Each weapon is useful for a different situation or type of enemy, though you’d likely stick to whatever has the most power. Still, sometimes it is better to wield a weaker weapon when the stakes are high.
The one problem I had with this game was the length. Granted I want to return GameFly games as quickly as possible, but even then five hours is not a lot of time for a title sold at launch for $50. While you can go back and replay levels to try and find all the collectibles, it is not necessary to find them in order to beat the game. The only unlockable features are concept art, which may be beautiful but not enough to make finding everything a top priority. There are also playable mini-games, but they only entertain for a few minutes.
The game’s strength simply lies in its imagination. The world is never boring to explore. Levels are absolutely huge and open-ended enough for the player to explore at their own pace and style. For as large as the world is graphics are highly detailed with excellent texture work. While it’s not going to win a beauty contest compared to an Xbox 360 game, this is the first title I’ve played on the Wii developed by a third party that looks better than the previous generation of games. Having a unique art style certainly helps, but simply looking at how much detail is placed into character textures and models reveals much more effort than the bare minimum. There are very, very few performance issues as well, where only a few times the framerate may drop when looking around the world.
Health and damage is indicated by the main character’s mushroom cap
Each boss is also designed so merely striking them with a weapon doesn’t work. Use of the environment and abilities is encouraged and often required. Other mushroom foes seem incredibly difficult at first, but soon you learn when to stop blocking and what weapon is best to use, not to mention making use of spore powers to defeat enemies in a quicker and more efficient manner.
Each level is made up of a series of exploration puzzles, some of which become awfully frustrating. However, most players should be fully capable of completing the game without having to resort to something like a FAQ for help.
The game’s second flaw is the actual difficulty. Even if the game may kill you frequently, you’ll instantly respawn near where you died. It saves frequently enough that death carries little consequence other than taking more time to play. I’ve never been bothered by such issues, but considering the severe backlash to Bioshock and the Vita chambers I imagine this will become a point of frustration for most gamers.
“Dude, like, I just ate three of your brothers and I am sooooooooo tripping right now.
It does, however, allow the game to be a good entry-level title for non-gamers to start off and sink their teeth into. The world and characters will be greatly amusing, the puzzles will bend their minds and the combat is simple enough for them to follow. It should also be noted that this is the first Wii game I’ve ever played where I swing the Wiimote and the character instantly attacks. Most titles have a short delay, but none exist in Mushroom Men. Stick waggling could become a decent enough game mechanic after all as long as the developer does it properly.
Mushroom Men: Spore Wars does not offer any new or great innovations, but it manages to pull enough good elements executed properly that it is a fun experience. The only problems it should be chastised for is length and ease of difficulty. Still, it’s a good title that is certainly worth checking out if you’re sick of playing as a space marine with an arsenal of generic guns.
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