LogFAQs > #954981954

Treasure Planet (PS2)
I actually bought this for $3 at GameStop many years ago, with the intention of beating it in a week and returning it (their policy used to be you could return a used game within 7 days for any reason; not sure if that's still the case). Well, I never touched it in that week and so it ended up sitting in my pile of unplayed games for years. But I'm a big fan of the film, and have a few friends who are as well, and every now and then I'd get into a conversation with one of them about it and remember I had this. The other day, a Facebook memory popped up for me in which I said KH3 needed to have a Treasure Planet world. One of them said that there needed to be a Treasure Planet video game, and lo and behold, I got to tell him this was a thing. With it on my mind, I decided to give it a whirl this weekend.

I actually went in with moderate expectations. Most of the Disney movie tie-ins of the late 90s/early 00s were not-that-bad, and some were even outright good. And we may as well throw this one into the not-that-bad category, at least for what it is. It's 3rd party PS2 3D platformer in all the glory of the genre. It's a little clunky and buggy. It's unresponsive at times. A lot of the time you won't land on something or grab a ledge that you thought you should have. The tasks are repetitive, the combat is wonky, and the worlds have few defining landmarks so it's easy to get lost when every inch of a level looks the same. There's also NPCs awkwardly telling you what the tasks are, and, like most of the Disney tie-in games of the era, the cutscenes are ripped directly from the film. Not only that, but they took some creative liberties with the story, adding/removing/changing/rearranging key plot elements, and adding new areas that weren't present in the film, for the sake of a simpler gaming experience.

While this is fairly faithful to the film, it could have been more faithful if they were willing to be a bit more ambitious and not just make it a straight platformer. There could have been some really great action sequences, but instead we get three levels of wandering around Montressor and four levels of wandering around the port, not to mention going places with the ship that just didn't happen in the movie.

But what works really works. When the controls respond and the gameplay gets smooth, you can really get into a groove and have a lot of fun. Maybe being a fan of the source material helped, but I found myself (up to a certain point) wanting to do as much as I could in each level before moving on, even if I had done enough to do so. Once I got to the final world, there were a couple of levels that I said fuck it, did one task for my own OCD's sake (I hate when you can honestly just skip levels; by the time I got to the final world I actually could have just skipped all the levels gone straight for the final boss because I had done enough tasks in previous levels, but committed myself to completing at least one task in each level). There's definitely a certain charm to it, and I enjoyed solving a lot of the puzzles, as long as there wasn't bullshit holding them back. And of course, solar surfing, while not implemented QUITE as well as it could have been, was a hell of a lot of fun (I mean it better have been).

I am embarrassed that there were parts of this game that I struggled and got frustrated with, especially since GameFAQs users have rated it between "easy" and "just right." It also took me a lot longer than HLTB says it should (12:25 hours, as opposed to 6:30-8). So yeah, another one for the "I suck at video games" category. I struggled with a Disney game made for 10 year olds. Oh well.

When all is said and done, this was an unpolished but passable platformer that missed out on a lot of potential while still being serviceable enough for fans of the film. And as far as movie tie-ins go, there are much, much, much, much worse that that out there.

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darkx
Games beaten in 2021 - 21; Most recent - Treasure Planet