The Problem with Licensed Games: Difference between revisions

*** The first game, (Blossom’s game) was ''[[The Powerpuff Girls: Bad Mojo]]''. This game may have been doomed from the start, as someone had the bright idea to release it on the same day as ''[[Dexter's Laboratory: Robot Rampage]]'', meaning BAM! had in effect, put two of their own games in direct competition with each other. Both games were marketed for younger audiences, and such buyers are usually on a limited budget. It's doubtful this helped sales. But that was hardly all. The animation and controls were poor. Blossom moved like a robot, controls are clumsy, and floaty, and the game had abysmal framerate drops. The plot was pretty dumb even compared to other [[Excuse Plot]]s; Mojo takes over Professor Utonium’s house and uses the lab to create monsters, so Blossom has to fight them, and with Bubbles and Buttercup nowhere to be found, has to do so alone. (Possibly, the events of the three games are happening simultaneously, and the Girls have split up for some reason.) In this game, you have to fight enemies, rescue citizens, and grab collectibles, all of which becomes tedious quickly, and the game actually becomes easier if you just fly past and ignore them. And speaking of which, the enemies really don’t look like they’re in the wrong game, as they have nothing to do with the cartoon. For example, flying jellyfish and a weird demon-thing. The boss battles are a little better, and you get to fight some villains from the show like Princess and Roach Coach, but mostly you just fight Mojo again and again, and this repetitive quickly. And of course, there are the glitches. For example, the Rowdyruff Boys disappear when you try to confront them in battle for absolutely no reason whatsoever. The music is [[Ear Worm]] hell, and even plays through the introduction and cutscenes, grating on the player’s nerves and ruining any attempt to follow the dialogue.

*** The second game - (Buttercup’s game) was ''[[The Powerpuff Girls: Paint the Town Green]]''. The biggest difference here was that the protagonist is Buttercup and the villains were the Gangrene Gang, but little else. The basic enemies were the same as the first game, the collectibles were the same and Buttercup was controlled the same as Blossom - badly. The boss battles showed more variety, as each member of the Gangrene Gang is different, but still got boring fast. There’s also a glitchy boss battle with Fuzzy Lumpkins where your stun attack sometimes doesn’t work on him for no reason. And the soundtrack was the same too, grating and annoying.

*** In the end, these three games were pretty much three versions of the same game, and all were bad. More than likely it was a shameless cash grab done to exploit a popular series.

** ''[[The Powerpuff Girls: Chemical X-Straction]]''. This game was released in 2021, and the reason it’s not under Sixth Generation titles is because it was released for [[Nintendo 64]] and [[Playstation]], meaning they released it when the superior [[Sega Dreamcast]] and ''[[PlayStation 2]]'' were already out and both [[GameCube]] and [[Xbox]] were only a few weeks away. But then, this game was little more than a shameless reskin of ''[[Tom and Jerry: Fists of Fury]]'' (a video game adaptation of a movie adaptation of a cartoon, made by the same company as this game) so at least they have that as an excuse. Again, the [[Excuse Plot]] of this game is pretty dumb; the Girls are baking pies, and Bubbles decides that, since the pies are made with sugar, spice, and everything nice (the three base ingredients the Girls themselves were made of) why not add some Chemical X (the accidental fourth ingredient) to make the pies “super”? Unfortunately, Mojo Jojo steals the pies, he and the other Townsville villains eat them, they gain superpowers, and the Girls have to go and beat them all up. The gameplay here is, well, if you’ve ever played ''[[Power Stone]]'', start with that, but give it bad controls, bad animation, a lot of input delay, and difficulty that’s all over the place, and you have a general idea. The fights range from too easy to drawn out and frustrating, and ''all'' of them are boring. The game is incredibly short (you can finish it in about an hour) and while each Girl can unlock something by beating Mojo, the [[Final Boss]] it’s impossible to unlock everything, as once you beat him with one Girl, you can’t unlock anything else. Each Girl has a story mode, but all three are pretty much the same, although the “true” ending can only be achieved with Blossom. For some reason.

*** Now, if you’re playing it on Playstation, the problems end there, but the Nintendo 64 version is much, much worse. First of all, it’s way too easy. Each Girl has an “explosion attack” which is practically a [[One-Hit Kill]] attack because it depletes the enemies’ health quickly when used in succession. The limited memory of the N64 cartridge causes many of the better content in the Playstation version to be omitted. There’s no voice acting, the cutscenes have no animation (just pictures with lines of dialogue) and only one piece of music (the cartoon’s theme tune) plays throughout the whole game, [[Ear Worm| on a continuous loop!]] Even fans of the show are going to find that annoying sooner or later.

 

== Sixth Generation (2001-05) ==