Developer: Behaviour Interactive
Publisher: Disney Interactive Studios
Platform: PS3, 360, Wii, 3DS
Brave The Videogame – Review
Disney Interactive Studios and Pixar bring us Brave The Videogame. It tells the story of the movie Brave. It was released for the PS3, Xbox360, Nintendo Wii, Nintendo DS and PC. You’d expect a movie game not to be really fancy and fairly easy. But what to expect from Brave? Let’s find out below.
Story:
The story of Brave The Video game resembles the story of Brave The Movie but less detailed. Merida fights with her Mother, whereafter she flees and meets a witch who grants her a wish. But the wish does not turn out as Merida wanted and now she has to set thing right. She has to go on a journey to find the 4 charms: earth, fire, wind and ice. With these charms she can defeat Mord’u and undo the curse on her family.
The storytelling makes use of moving pictures instead of actual movies, which I found a bit disappointing. It would have made the game much better if they used some actual clips. But you get the picture and you can follow the story.
Graphics:
Because the game had been developed for Nintendo Wii, the companies tend to use an updated version for the other platforms (in this case PS3, Xbox360 and PC). Because this is the game of a Disney/Pixar co-operation you would naturally expect beautiful graphics, but alas they did it again. The graphics resembles the ones of a PS2 game, which is a bit low for this time and age. The graphics from the movie were brilliant, but the game doesn’t even come close.
Overall the game looks nice for a Wii game, yet the 2 other consoles and the PC are capable of much more.
Sound:
The game has a good soundtrack, I think it’s pretty much the same as the movie. The sfx are nicely done.
The game also offers us the original cast, but there are only 2 voices used in the game. You get the voice of Merida (duh it would be weird not to have the main character) and the witch.
To keep it short, the game did a decent job when it comes to the sfx and the music. But maybe they could have used some more voice actors.
Gameplay:
During the game you will have to collect the four charms which will eventually let you defeat Mord’u. You get them in the first few levels (there are 8 levels in total). And then with the money you collect you can upgrade your charm combo’s. Money is collected by breaking jars and barrels and even killing innocent flowers with your sword. But also by killing enemies of course. 8 levels is not a lot but a playthrough is done in about 6 – 7 hours so for a game like this it’s not that bad.
A level usually consists out of Merida fighting enemies with her sword or bow (the bow is controlled by the right analog stick, so it shoots in the direction you point the stick) and looking for hidden chests which contain new swords, new bows or a new piece of cloting. A puzzle where you control her 3 little brothers to solve it and open a locked door. A big fight where her mother appears in her bear form and you have to fight with the bear instead of Merida. And in some levels there is a boss fight, which are not to hard, but beware on Brave difficulty because it’s harder then you’d expect from a movie based game.
Brave The Videogame can be played co-op locally. Player 2 will have to press start at any given moment and can then join Merida on her quest as a Whisp. Whisps are little blue creatures which appear around Merida when she’s on a kill streak without getting hit herself. When hit all the Whisps disappear and you have to start all over again. But the Whisp that is controlled by player 2 of course does not disappear when Merida’s hit.
The co-op mode might make the game a bit easier, but the camera is always focused on Merida. This means player 2 can get out of the screen which is annoying at some points. But all in all when you stay together it can be quite fun.
The game also offers 3 mini games which can be played with the move controller on PS3 (I suspect with Kinect on Xbox360 and logically with the wii mote on Nintendo Wii) where you have to draw an arrow by holding the move behind your back and holding the trigger button, then bringing it back in front of you and releasing the trigger to shoot the arrow.
Quiver limit, shoot al the targets with a limited amount of arrows.
Survival, shoot all the target which are moving towards you, when a target reaches you it’s game over.
Quick Draw, shoot all the target in a limited amount of time.
You might want to try them out but it’s doubtful you’ll actually spend hours playing around with these modes.
Conclusion:
Brave was a more fun game than expected, even the 3 mini games were fun but unfortunately were very quickly finished. I would recommend to play it on Brave difficulty to have some challenge. I’m actually quite glad I got to review this game.
No Comments