Jumper: Griffin’s Story – 360 – Review

Back on February 14, the box office
received a little movie called Jumper. Starring Hayden Christensen, Diane
Lane and Samuel L. Jackson, the premise was based around a few special
individuals that have the ability to teleport anywhere their imagination wanders
as long as they had previously seen a photograph. The critical reception for the
film didn’t win over many fans as it was labeled as lethargic, incomprehensible,
and a tedious film. With those attributes attached to the franchise already,
it’s no wonder that many casual gamers didn’t know there was a video game being
released before stumbling upon it on store shelves because it’s even worse than
the film.

Jumper: Griffin’s Story is
prequel to the events of the film revolving around Jamie Bell’s supporting
character from the movie, Griffin. Griffin is a fellow jumper that is out to
avenge the death of his parents. If you haven’t seen the film, our
recommendation is to do so immediately before playing the game because the first
problem with the game is that it provides no depth in retelling the storyline in
any manner. The developer expects everyone who plays Jumper to already
have watched the movie and obtained all the information themselves on who the
characters are. Many gamers will want to at least get a plot summary of the
movie as there’s not much here to follow by.

Jumper’s gameplay lies
within the button-masher realm. Griffin will embark on missions where he must
fight countless Paladins — an organization out to kill all Jumpers — and make
use of floating orbs to teleport. Many gamers will find this ironic as Griffin
should have the ability to teleport anywhere he’d like, but the game limits the
players only to teleporting from orb to orb.

The combat is based around hitting
the face buttons (X, Y, A, B) in a corresponding manner of how the enemies are
situated. If an enemy is facing to your left, hitting the B button will teleport
you to their right side for a blindside attack. This method, the one of hitting
them from behind, is the best way to play through Jumper with ease. The game
makes it a little easier to figure out which side to attack as there’ll be a red
bar indicating where they’re blocking and a green bar where the best spot to
attack is. If you attack where the green bar is located, then you’ll be able to
fill up your power bar to unleash a special slow-motion attack to get one up on
the opposition.

Outside of those basics from the
combat, there’s a customizable combo system and “extreme kills” to take
advantage of. The combo system allows player to set up their “starters,” “mids,”
and “finishers” to keep attacking the enemies without any stopping. As for the
“extreme kills,” they’re when Griffin enters into a cut scene and grabs hold of
the enemy and transports them to a different area to leave them to die. All of
the “extreme kills” are done in CGI and happen to be the most intriguing part of
the entire game.

Graphically speaking, the game is
clearly a generation behind: the enemy models are reused over and over again,
everyone in the game is poorly animated, and the camera is clumsy. Perhaps if
developers fixed the camera then the game might be actually worthy of playing
through as a rental, but even then, the frame rates constantly drop below a
manageable level and there’s not many effects to go with the combat. It’s just
not that pleasing on the eyes.

If your gamer score is important to
you, then Jumper is the game for you as it hands them out like candy on
Halloween night. Players should be able to unlock almost all the achievement
points after one run through with the game. Outside of that, the other bright
spot about Jumper is that it’s a short rollercoaster ride that you’ll be
glad to get off of. Lasting only a few hours, it shouldn’t take too long to
complete.

Gameplay: 3.9
They had a great game mechanic to work with – jumping/teleporting – but it
didn’t exactly translate well into the game.

Graphics: 2.5
Visually, it is two steps back for the Xbox 360 standard.

Sound: 5.5
Jamie Bell reprises his character for voice-acting so that’s a plus. Outside of
that, the orchestra music isn’t half bad.

Difficulty: Easy
The game was essentially made for the younger crowd, so the difficulty isn’t
at an all-time high.

Concept: 3.0
Movie tie-ins aren’t anything new, but at least having it as a prequel to the
movie makes it more worthy of a fanatic’s time.

Overall: 3.5
There could have been a lot of innovative aspects, but in the end, it’s too
repetitive. With not challenging the gamers, Jumper’s only redeeming
factor is the easy-to-earn achievement points.