There’s some serious
dark-fantasy credibility behind the various installments of Coraline. The
original book was written by Neil Gaiman, known for writing comics and novels
that masterfully combine lighthearted elements with truly disturbing horror. The
film version is directed by Henry Selick, best known for directing The Nightmare
Before Christmas, arguably the most popular animated dark fantasy film of the
past 20 years. Now that the movie is out we’ve gotten the inevitable game
adaptation, courtesy of Papaya Studios; while not a total failure, the game is a
mediocre offering that fails to capture the magic of the works it’s based on.
Coraline Jones is a bored young
girl, neglected by her busy parents after moving into a new house called the
Pink Palace. While exploring, Coraline discovers a door that leads her to the
Other World, a bright and surreal alternate version of the Pink Palace, complete
with an Other Mother and Other Father. Aside from the fact that everyone has
buttons for eyes, it seems like a great place: everything’s unusual and
interesting, and her Other Mother and Father show her care and attention. When
Coraline tries to leave, though, she begins to realize that the alternate world
is much more sinister than it first appears. The game follows and expands on the
events of the movie, even using short scenes from the film as cut scenes between
stages. The story is told in fits and starts, though, and some important events
are passed by with little or no explanation. Anyone who’s not seen the movie or
read the book will probably have little success trying to follow the plot here.
You can interact with all the major
characters from the story,
but the plot isn’t given the attention it needs to be
coherent.
The gameplay could best be
described as a mini-game collection wrapped in an action/adventure game. Players
can explore the Pink Palace and the surrounding areas at their leisure,
interacting with various objects, people, and other points of interest. Very
often these lead you into mini-games, and success in these allows you to progress
through the story. Winning games also gives you buttons, the game’s money, which
you can spend to unlock new outfits for Coraline or to buy your way past
difficult mini-games. Some mini-games let Coraline use her slingshot to fire at
assorted targets, from the few enemies you face in the game (mostly creepy
pests, like bugs and rats) to shooting apples out of a tree.
Areas where you can start mini-games
are easily located, as they’re marked with a blue warning sign.
But that’s all there is to
it. Aside from finding and playing (or buying your way past) the few new mini-games you’ll find in each area, there’s not a whole lot to do. Even that
would be fine if the mini-games were great, but they’re not. Some of them are
kind of fun, but more often than not you’ll find yourself completing boring
fetch quests, unwieldy slingshot challenges, or playing a shoddy reproduction of
a real-life game — Go Fish, for example.
A couple of the mini-games are music
based, but they’re not much better than any of the others.
The game’s problems don’t stop
there. There’s the issue of length, for instance — expect to see the game’s
credits roll in about three hours. That is, if you don’t encounter a
game-crashing bug before then. Coraline got stuck when I was trying to get her
to climb down a flight of steps, and the game locked up, forcing me to reset.
Even if the game hasn’t locked up, you might think it has, because load times
are frequent and l-o-n-g. To make matters worse, not only does the game have to
load each new area when you transition (say, from inside her house to outside),
it first loads the little door-opening cinematic, plays it (unskippable, I might
add), then has another marathon loading session before you’re finally allowed
outside. Woe to the player that accidentally opens the outside door when you
need to be inside — by the time all the loading and cute little animations are
through and you’re back inside, you’ll be lucky if you remember what you were
supposed to be doing.
At least the developers
replicated the film’s aesthetic fairly well, given the limitations of the PS2
hardware. Each of the characters looks remarkably like their film counterpart,
right down to their movement and facial animations. The environments look pretty
good too, though they lack the detail you’d see on film. The real winner,
presentation-wise, is the game’s audio. The music, taken from the movie score,
is energetic, adventurous, and creepy. The voice acting is remarkably well
done—which it should be, considering that Dakota Fanning reprised her film role
as Coraline, along with a few of the other central cast members. Even the ones
voiced by sound-alikes do a notable job.
Every once in a while, the
gaming world gets a movie-based game that’s truly great, and it’s fondly
remembered for years to come (look no further than Goldeneye). Then there’s the
other end of the spectrum, the movie games that are so legendarily bad that
they’re considered among the worst games of all time (anybody remember The Fifth
Element for PS1?). Coraline doesn’t really come close to either extreme. It’s a
fairly competent, somewhat flawed, incredibly forgettable kid’s game. If you’re
a die-hard Coraline fan, you might have fun playing through it. For anybody
else, though, that’s $30 that you’d be better off putting toward tickets to see
the movie again.
Gameplay: 5.1
You’ll explore a little, perform a
fetch quest here, play a mini-game there. It’s occasionally mildly fun but rarely
very engaging. There’s nothing here that hasn’t been done better in other games.
Graphics: 7.1
The characters and environments look
impressively like their film counterparts, especially given that the game’s
running on the PS2. The characters are detailed and well-animated, and while the
environments are kind of blocky and simple, they’ve captured the movie’s twisted
visual style.
Sound: 7.7
With several of the film leads doing
voices (and good performances from the rest), the dialog sounds great. The
music’s awesome too, but some songs are looped quite often.
Difficulty: Easy/Medium
Some of the mini-games, especially
later on, can get a little tough. If you ever get stuck, though, you can grind
the easy mini-games for buttons, then buy your way past the mini-game that was
giving you trouble.
Concept: 5.2
The mini-game/adventure-lite
combination of gameplay is a decent fit for the game’s target audience, that is
to say, the pre-teen crowd. Too bad that so many of the activities and mini-games
are pretty boring and forgettable.
Overall: 5.3
Coraline for PS2 isn’t a terrible
game — it is, however, a dull, routine, by-the-numbers movie adaptation. It’s as
bland and forgettable as the movie and book are fresh and original, and it’s a
real shame that some of that magic couldn’t come across in interactive form.
