Game REVIEWS
Planet 51: The Game Review
Developer: Sega
Platform: Xbox 360, PS3, Wii, Nintendo DS
Category: Action
Available Now
“Planet 51: The Game” is based on Tristar Pictures new movie “Planet 51”, developed and released by Sega. The game is about a race to save Chuck from the Army and Area 9, featuring 3 playable characters from the movie: Lem, Rover and Charles “Chuck” Baker.
The game’s premise is very simple: for Lem, he must complete tasks given to him by different residents. As you progress with Lem in his tasks and scenarios, Astronaut Chuck makes his entrance to Planet 51. Chuck, once landing on the “alien” planet, must escape his pursuers: policeman and army men by running and hiding around town and ducking in trash cans. The final playable character is Chuck’s faithful pet “Rover”, NASA’s planet exploration robot who has a huge fascination for rocks.
Most games are role-playing games (RPG), where the player plays in a free world with the intention of completing many different tasks: where you drive to each task, roaming in the hopes that you will collect all the comic books as trophies. Each task unlocks a different type of mini game for Lem such as: Delivery boy, he is to deliver packages to a certain location while meeting certain conditions; racing challenges, a race between Lem and others to see who is first to reach the designated point; paperboy, Lem delivers newspapers; Mowing lawns/circus tent, you mow the lawn, take out the moles and avoid obstacles, because the Lawn Mower takes damage (enough damage and the mower is out of commission); and Car Crasher, there are soldiers blocking you (Lem & Chuck) from escaping, you need take them out before they get to you.
The game is fairly easy (it only took me five hours to complete) with a good storyline; this game seems to purely entertain kids. The easy part is completing the story, but what is tedious, and very annoying, is to collect all the trophies/achievements in this game. There are 10 levels to each task, with only a slight difference between one level to another. In order to complete the 10 levels, it all has to be done at once, as in one right after another. No, you can not leave and come back to finish it later. What this lovely game does is that it will start the challenge all over again from level 1. For example, the Car Crusher mission is, in my opinion, 1 hour and 10 minutes of tedious game play that is not worth spending on. If you want to get all the trophies/achievements you have to do every single task to level 10; some you have to complete all the challenges in a similar category. This will eventually gain you your trophy/achievement and 3 stickers out of 60; the sticker collection is random. You can do every single task in the game and still not have completed the sticker collection. It is quite frustrating if you are working toward unlocking everything in the game.
Lastly multiplayer, it is local (where your friend has to be there to play). There are 3 different games that you two can compete in: car crusher, racing and hot bomb. There’s nothing great: it adds a small challenge for/involving your friend rather than a computer controlled character. The only thing new is hot bomb, which is just taking each other out and really isn’t worth playing, but a nice add on.
“Planet 51: The Game” has a great start. The main story mode follows the movie’s plot and can be enjoyable for teens and kids; that’s about it, everything after is needless and boring. I put in an extra 5 hours to try to achieve every extra trophy possible and got completely frustrated, so I gave up a bit past the half way point. “Planet 51: The game” is worth checking out, but possibly only a rental at best.
** Written by Christopher Del Castillo
