![]() ![]() ![]() If kids have been indifferent to global warming up until now, this "Ice Age" sequel will change that forever. Don't you hate it when that happens? Then a jet of water springs from the ice face, and another, and another. He's engaged as usual in a perilous chase after an acorn, which is all the more desirable because where is the oak from which it fell? The squirrel climbs a vertical ice wall with his claws, almost falls, is saved when his tongue freezes to the ice, and then has to pull himself up by its own tongue, paw over paw. ![]() But if I am going to require logical continuity in an animated comedy, I might as well admit that Daffy Duck is not real, and that I refuse to do.Īs "Ice Age: The Meltdown" opens, it is Scrat who observes the first danger signal of global change. Remarkable, that they're still around although tens of thousands of years must have passed since the previous film. Most of the other characters are back in "Ice Age: The Meltdown," but their story is more of a slog than a sprint. While that might be a bit disappointing for a big fan of the film, his presence is felt enough through the game that it never feels like he's just been cut out of the equation.Only Scrat, the ferocious little sabre-toothed squirrel, retains his magic from the original " Ice Age" (2002). Oddly, Manfred never becomes playable at any point via these minigames. All these games are pretty decent, and fortunately, there's not much repetition or recycling of the same games throughout the adventure. ![]() There's also a number of target-shooting and item-collection minigames with Scrat. The game features a series of minigames, including a whack-a-mole (or whack-a-possum, in this case) game starring Diego and a hybrid of a slalom and a rhythm game with Sid. The control is tight, the puzzles are generally clever, and the levels are open-ended and provide a decent bit of exploration.ĭiego and Sid do find their way into the game eventually, although purely in a second-banana capacity. Young children ought not to have too much trouble with the game, but even players from older audiences ought to be able to appreciate much of what the game does, even if it doesn't present an awful lot of difficulty. The jump puzzles featured in Ice Age 2 are fairly run of the mill for the genre, but more challenging and rewarding than your average kid-oriented game. Again, this is a platformer, so it's hardly shocking that the game is something of a collection-fest, but there are thousands of nuts scattered throughout the game. So it's appropriate that you spend the bulk of the game collecting more nuts than you could possibly imagine. The whole hook with Scrat's character is that he's constantly in search of nuts to hoard and bury. Mostly, the game is all about solving various jump puzzles and collecting scads and scads of nuts. Combat in the game is more of a secondary task, since most enemies can't be killed - just knocked out. Like the protagonist in any platformer, Scrat can jump, double jump, and pull off some very basic attacks that mostly involve stomping and swiping with his tail. His twitchy mannerisms and goofy snarls and screeches are pretty cute, and the developers did a great job of giving him moves and abilities that don't seem out of place for a prehistoric rodent. Scrat is an entirely endearing character, and spending the bulk of your time with him is far from a detriment. That turns out for the better in Ice Age 2. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |