by:	June 27, 2004

Shrek 2 is another collaborated movie/video game, is it possible that they can both be good? The movie took you back into the life of Shrek and onto another adventure of his. Princess Fiona (his wife) and Shrek went on a journey to meet Princess Fiona’s parents in the land Far Far Away. Of course Shrek’s faithful sidekick Donkey went along for the ride. There adventure started off in a long carriage ride to the land of Far Far Away. The whole time Donkey was asking “Are we there yet?”, when they finally got there everyone was cheering. The cheering didn’t last long because they stepped out in front of a massive group of humans, being that they are ogre’s the scenario didn’t mix well. After this part of the movie the adventure went on with a feud between Princess Fiona’s parents and the two Newlyweds. As the movie went along another couple came into the mix to cause trouble, these two were Prince Charming and his mother the Fairy Godmother. It so happened that the FGM had a deal with Princess Fiona’s father the King of the land Far Far Away, that her son was to marry Fiona. This led to a solution that would possibly end Shrek’s existence. The King then went down to a bar where he knew a legendary Hitman lived. The Hitman was not shown while the deal was being made. After the King told Shrek to meet him in a secretive location, the Hitman was revealed. The Hitman was the surprisingly small Puss in Boots. This little Spanish cat was suppose to be the answer to the Kings problem. They began to fight, by the end of the fight Shrek had found out what was going on and acquired Puss to be his friend. The surprising thing in the movie was that Shrek turned into a human and donkey turned into a Steed after stealing/drinking a potion from the FGM. The only problem was, whoever kissed her before midnight was her true love forever. This ended up a problem, because Prince Charming tried acting like Shrek in human form. This led to the big finale at the Kingdom’s ball. Shrek and his comrades had to figure out how to prevent Princess Fiona from kissing Prince Charming by midnight. This ended up with Shrek and his team crashing the party and fighting off the FGM and Prince Charming. Shrek and Princess Fiona kissed and became Ogre’s again, which ended a long journey in a happy ending.

The video game takes the form of a RPG/Adventure/Platformer approach. Throughout the game it follows in the footsteps of the movie almost exact. Being a video game it had to add more spice to make the game last longer and to make it more appealing. The game takes you a little more in detail of the adventure from the original movie, asking you to do some side quests. These involve helping Jack and Jill on their farm, aiding some people in the land Far Far Away, or rescuing some prisoners just to name a few. This take takes many elements from each of those three genres and combines them into one, it is a good approach. This game suites all ages being rated E for everyone.

When playing the game there are 3 modes in which you play the game. The first mode is called the Buddy system or the more familiar name “single player mode”. When playing single player you can control any 1 character while the computer controls the other three. The team consists of Shrek, Princess Fiona, Donkey, Gingerbread Man, Puss in Boots (acquired in the middle of the game), Big Bad Wolf, Lil’ Red, and Fairy. Each of the characters have their own powers, strengths, and weaknesses. This makes the game interesting and makes you have to think. No worries though, you don’t have to worry about switching the characters in and out of the gameplay, because in every level the game provides you with the correct 4 players needed in order to succeed. Having this ability makes the game more exciting and keeps it new. The drawback is that you have to learn everyone’s powers over a short period of time by switching between them quite often. Hero time is a special mode for 1 of the 4 characters that are on the screen. Since some of the characters are better suited for certain tasks, hero time allows them to use their talents to help beat the level. Multiplayer mode is much the same. Except when you add more human players you lose a little bit of freedom in choosing who you use to play. With 4 players you cannot change between characters unless you plan ahead of time and reserve your choice before the others are added. Each human player is marked with a colored circle around their character, this helps you tell the difference between who is playing which character. Player 1 is yellow, player 2 is red, player 3 is blue, and player 4 is green.