Madagascar Escape 2 Africa Review

BY Nicholas Rego | POSTED: 10 January 2009

Do you want to play it play it?



As the year comes to a close, gamers will look fondly on the months of gaming gone by and shed a tear for all the happy hours spent playing their favourite AAA titles. As a reviewer, my tears are shed for the hours I’ve spent reviewing some fantastic games as well as those games which you almost know are going to be awful. Having received a copy of Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa for the Playstation 3, I was undecided whether this would be a game as enjoyable as the movies or just a last-minute movie tie-in failure (we don’t have a particularly good track record with reviewing games based on movies).



The film Madagascar 2 chronicles the adventures of Alex the lion, Gloria the hippo, Marty the zebra, and Melman the giraffe, four escapees from the New York Zoo. Having shipwrecked on the island of Madagascar in the first film, the second film shows our brave explorers trying to escape Madagascar, only to crash land in Africa, thus setting the scene for the second film’s story. The game faithfully tries to recreate key scenes from the movie, thanks to clips from the film as well as several cutscenes, so even if you haven’t watched the film yet, you can grasp the storyline.

Your first level, based on the island itself, is more of a training ground, and puts you in charge of each of our four heroes. Each one handles slightly differently, with rather unique abilities. You start off with Alex, who can double-jump and roar to scare away enemies. You then get to have a play with Marty, who can race around and kick objects to use as projectiles. Next comes Gloria, who can swim and dive in water, pound things with her derriere, and pick up red peppers for a charge boost. Finally you get the oddest character – Melman, who can use his head to hammer in nails, attack enemies, and can even spin around to attack groups of enemies. But his most bizarre skill is his ability to hover over large gaps. Yes, you heard correctly folks – a giraffe that can cross ravines by spinning around like a helicopter.

The basic gameplay revolves around completing several tasks and mini games in order to progress. In the first level for example, you have to find bits of rope in order to make a slingshot to launch the airplane. This should take you around 20 seconds to complete, as all that’s involved is jumping across a few platforms and then retrieving the rope. In this particular task, the game switches to a button-matching mini-game to help ‘tie’ the rope ends together, which should provide about as much excitement as shaving with sandpaper. The minigames themselves are often tedious and irritating, and the misguided controls don’t help at all. In one game, you have to use Gloria to charge into some open suitcases, and then pound them shut. While this should in theory take you less than a minute, it becomes nearly impossible to accomplish, because you will precious moments trying to line up Gloria properly, only to have her charge in some other direction. And in another game where Melman has to hammer nails into the ground, it was almost impossible to finish the task without swearing, as I had to spend a lot of time aligning Melman up just right in order to hit the nail. Younger players will soon find this meticulous effort frustrating, so it’s a real shame that the minigames, although fun, are often difficult to get through. If you grow tired of the main Story mode, you can replay any of the unlocked mini-games, or head to the Duty Free shop to purchase and unlock extra outfits, scenes from the movies, hidden games, and others. It’s fair compensation for the somewhat crippled gameplay, so some players will enjoy unlocking all the collectables.

Given that it’s a game that’s catering for a younger audience, the graphics here are nothing to shout about. The environments are bright and look fairly decent, but the game is plagued with constant framerate and graphical glitches, especially when the camera pans around during a cutscene. In some areas, the shadows and shading are completely off – for one level where I was controlling Alex, I couldn’t see his shadow at all, so I could never ‘see’ where he was going to land when leaping across platforms. The background soundtrack matches the game well, with drum beats and other percussion instruments helping to set the mood. The voice acting is a bit dry, as I don’t think the actors from the film lent their voices to the game. Your adventures of course are always narrated by King Julian, which provides a small dose of humor as you plod through the game.



Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa would have been a great game for younger players to enjoy, but its often terrible controls and frustrating mini-games will leave many disappointed. If some more work had been done on this game, it could have turned out to be a really enjoyable one, but as it stands, it has far too many holes in it to be considered worth playing.