LOS ANGELES — THQ is releasing a new Video Game, to accompany the new DreamWorks movie “Megamind.”
There seems to be fairly limited details on the new movie, mostly based on the two trailers that have been released. The new Movie is about the Super Villain Megamind who manages to kill his opponent. He then decides he needs a new super hero, so attempts to create a new one. Unfortunately his newly created super hero actually decides he likes being a villain better, and instead of ruling the world just destroys everything. This forces Megamind to take on the role of super hero to stop him. The premise behind this movie and game is interesting, that "villains make the best heroes."
The game plays as Megamind, and his trusty side-kick Minion, trying to stop Titan and the Doom Syndicate. Megamind’s super power is cliche, his mind. The game generally follows the movie, but since games tend to be longer they had to add more enemies to fight. They didn’t just come up with random characters themselves though, they used some of the extra characters designed for the movie that were removed, because of time constraints. THQ worked with the movie team to make sure these added characters would fit with the story.
THQ also made an interesting decision on how to make the game mult-iplatform. Instead of having a game for each platform that aims at the lowest common denominator, they decided to make three different games focusing on the strengths of each platform. The HD version of the game is a single player with second player assist, similar to Super Mario Galaxy but is only available for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. For the Wii, though they went with a 4 player brawler, where you can unlock new characters by beating them. The DS, and the PSP are aimed at fitting their screen, and using their technology but being a different game than the HD version.
While at E3, we were able to try out the HD version. They designed it to be a good family game, approachable by all ages.
The controls are very simple, just basic movement on the D-pad, a button for shoot and another for action. They made nearly everything in the game destructible, figuring that kids like to go around destroying things.
THQ tried to make the puzzles not too simple to bore the adults. This was harder to see from the short demo of the game we saw. The game seemed to play like any 3D platformer. With super power upgrades, and bad guys to beat up along the way. The game did seem fun. We even saw a Tesla gun upgrade that let us chain hit enemies, one after another. Though like a lot of movie based games it will likely rely heavily on the success or failure of the movie.
Megamind the game is scheduled to be released with the movie in November.
Leave a Reply