uturama may have ended its long, haphazard run on Fox this summer, but fans of the animated science-fiction comedy can still catch one last outing of the Planet Express gang in the form of a video game.
The third-person-perspective adventure game pits the player—in the form of Fry, Leela, Bender or Dr. Zoidberg—against the megalomaniac and would-be dictator Mom. As it opens, Professor Farnsworth has just sold Planet Express to Mom, unwittingly giving her ownership of just over 50 percent of the Earth's businesses. That allows her to become world leader overnight, and she soon sets about a plan to convert the planet into an honest-to-God Spaceship Earth.
Dr. Farnsworth, Fry, Leela, Bender, Dr. Zoidburg and the rest of messenger company's oddball crew immediately decide to flee the planet in their ship, only to be chased by Mom—who's just realized that the good doctor is the only one capable of building an engine big enough to power her converted homeworld.
The one-player game features the voice of the series regulars, 30 minutes' worth of game-rendered cinematics, 22 levels of gameplay, and a plot penned by the show's own writers. Characters are moved around using a rudimentary set of arcadelike controls that allow them to jump, attack and open objects. Each character has its own attack mode—for example, Fry gets to play with a variety of ray guns, while Bender gets to close up with bull rush attacks, flying fists and a couple of special power moves. The game's default camera view is aft of the character, but it can be rotated using the game controller, and players can switch to first-person perspective when needed.
The game's visuals feature 3-D graphics rendered in Futurama's 1950s pulp-meets-The Simpsons style, and the soundtrack offers techno-inspired variations on the show's signature theme.
Sometimes, the joke's on us
Futurama is a mildly amusing game that's faithful to its source material but misses opportunities for humor and is encumbered by mediocre gameplay.
Visually, the game mimics the series very well—there are only a few onscreen moments where the characters' look jars with that of the series. In particular, the eyes tend to go a little more oval than on TV—it's a minor flaw, but one fans will notice—and promptly forgive. The voice acting's on par with the series, and features all of Futurama's voice talent. It's a pleasant surprise to hear the real Fry and Bender reciting their trademark lines, and the extra effort's appreciated.
The game's humor tends to be more PG-13 than the series, featuring "suggestive themes" like ads for alien three-way sex acts, a robot red-light district and a few off-color jokes. The plot, and the humor derived from it, is on par with the series, and should amuse fans greatly.
Futurama bills itself as an action/adventure game. And in practice, this involves the characters collecting numerous coins (well, not coins, but their equivalents—Fry picks up cash, Bender snags gems, Leela gets gold bars and Zoidberg picks up fish) while trying to battle past the level's various defenders and challenges. Hidden throughout the levels are multiple Nibblers (Leela's alien pet); collecting all of the Nibblers unlocks special bonuses. None of this is particularly original, but how it's done is amusing. Fry squeals with glee as he picks up bundles of money, while Bender drools over what he'll do with his collected crystals. All of the characters mock the player if left idle for too long, and utter catch phrases when they score an extra life.
Unfortunately, all of this involves a heck of a lot of jumping, followed by more jumping, topped off by, yes, just a bit more jumping. Gameplay is divided into quarters among the four primary characters, and each has at least one jumping-intensive level that requires quick reflexes, mastery of the game's timing, and extremely un-Bender-like levels of patience.
In and of itself, jumping isn't necessarily a bad thing—Super Mario Brothers and its myriad sequels have proven that—but jumping combined with sudden-death obstacles gets tired darn quick. Plus, the game's designers seem to have had an uncanny knack for scattering annoying tasks before the jump sequence. In the early "sewer" levels, there's one section where the player needs to defeat two monsters and pick up a bonus item before confronting a jump challenge involving a room filled with radioactive goo and several moving alligators. The first time is entertaining—the 20th time is simply grueling. And unfortunately, that challenge isn't atypical.
The jumping is frustrating, but these challenges can be passed with enough patience (or the right cheat codes downloaded from the Net). What's really disappointing is how many opportunities for quick one-liners, in-jokes and genre satire the game missed. The radioactive sewer levels—all of which take part below New New York—don't include a single C.H.U.D. joke or even a passing reference to Beneath the Planet of the Apes. The various "jump across the alligators' backs" jumping challenges cried out for a Frogger reference, especially from the 20th Century's Fry—but there are none.
There are the occasional nods. The characters remark about how strange it is that people leave money, gems, ammunition and other valuables lying around, and Bender's ecstatic when he becomes a playable character. In the game's first act, Fry gets to pilot a Star Wars-inspired chicken walker, and in the second there are cacti that lash out at Bender in a manner reminiscent of Half-Life's hook-beaked tentacles, but these jokes are not enough to sustain players when they're trying to jump past their hundredth obstacle.
That said, when players aren't forced into jumping, the game is entertaining. Running Fry through New New York in the aforementioned chicken walker is a blast, as are his Rambo-like assaults on Mom's robot legions. Bender's one-liners are the best of the lot—I particularly liked "Hey, meatbag, you wanna hit the pause button, or you wanna play?"—and the cutscenes are worth the wait (though it would've been nice if the cinematics had come halfway through acts instead of just at the end).
In the end, though, only a passion for Futurama and a desire to see how the episode ends will drive a player to complete the game. Anyone who doesn't consider Fry and company old friends would probably abandon it in the sewers of Act I.
Futurama's worth renting for fans of the series—they should just make sure to download the cheat codes to help them skirt past the game's rough spots.
— Ken
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