Fighters Month: Shrek Super Slam

Game: Shrek Super Slam
Console: Sony Playstation 2
Developer: Shaba Games
Release Date: 25th October 2005

Movie tie-in games generally tend to be pretty awful. Movie tie-in games that seemingly have very little to do with the films on the other hand, tend either to be pretty good or absolutely awful. Shrek Super Slam is a 3D fighting game based on the Shrek series of films, with Story and Challenge modes as well as two player options. Story mode is a series of fights with different characters which are being told as bedtime stories by Shrek and friends to the 'Dronkeys', in order to put them to sleep and is the main arcade mode of the game.

Challenge mode gives players objectives to complete in different battles, allowing them to choose which character to play as, as well as tournaments which are interspersed between the objective based battles. This mode takes place in a board game like setting, and challenges players to make their way across the board, with the challenges and tournaments increasing in difficulty as the mode continues.

Fighting takes place in 3D environments from the Shrek universe and players are allowed to roam as they like. Many items placed around the level can be picked up and thrown to damage opponents in addition to the fast and heavy attacks featured. To do a combo move, any combination of fast and heavy attacks can be pressed. Any move which hits an opponent fills up the SLAM meter which once full can unleash a devastating slam attack on each opponent currently being faced.

Bouts are scored by counting the number of slam moves successfully performed on opponents and subtracting it from the number of slam moves that players have been subjected to. In this way there are no health bars in the game, and every bout lasts a standard amount of time (2 minutes). On the whole fights are pretty easy, at least until players reach the 1-on-3 bouts, which seem a little unfair to me.

Graphically the game is constrained by the limits of the Playstation 2, but that doesn't mean to say that it's particularly bad. Apart from a few character close-ups, the game is generally acceptable visually, especially so for fans of the Shrek franchise as they'll recognise the battle locations. Characters appear to be voiced by their movie counterparts, which is a bonus, but the game's soundtrack is particularly bland.

Overall Shrek Super Slam is predictably a game mostly for fans of the Shrek series, targeted towards younger gamers. This doesn't mean that it's particularly bad; in fact the SLAM scoring system is pretty inventive and there's quite a bit to do in Challenge mode, but the main story mode only takes around half an hour, past which point players have seen most of what the game has to offer. For a Shrek game though, it's not as bad as it could have been.

Rating: 60/100
Grade: D