Up Review

BY Rabie Hassoun | POSTED: 11 August 2009

Colorful but short.



It is crucial to approach this type of games carefully. While UP might be a movie that Pixar created with both the young and old audience in mind, the game is a completely different story.  You will figure this one out from the budget price and colourful cover, UP the game is for the kids to enjoy only. Using the colourful world from the movie as a background and adding the original characters and a bit of the main story, kids might be in for a treat here.



This is your typical platform movie based videogame. Avoid obstacles and solve some simple quests with some button mashing as a side dish. The exploration part has you walk around some of the scenes from the movie looking for collectables. The puzzle solving can get interesting at times, since you can switch between the two characters to figure the puzzle out. Luckily for the not so bright kids, next to some puzzles you can play an audio tape giving you clues on how to solve this specific puzzle. The button mashing is what might prove to be a little annoying, with some sequences catching you off guard most of the time. Aside from that last part however, the gameplay will keep the kids busy for a bit.

Another movie based videogame, and yet another short game to finish. With the budget price intact, it can be argued that the length of the game is expected. But having a game that any young gamer can beat in 3-5 hours is not exactly worth a purchase regardless of the price. Luckily here, UP the videogame offers gamers a chance to play the game and look for more collectables even after completing the main quest. If you can convince your friends to play this one, the game comes with a few multiplayer mini games for you and yours friends to mess around with.

Gamers that pick this one up without watching the movie might be left a bit confused after the main quests concludes. The game does offer some scenes from the movies explaining the story a bit, but those scenes scattered across the game are not exactly detailed. You will struggle with figuring some story plots out. So take your kids out to watch the movie first before picking this one up.



The sound is probably the safest bet when picking up a movie based videogame. UP features some of the tunes we heard in the movie and the voice acting lines are relatively well done. Overall, the sound department offer nothing new to the movie games genre. The graphics here fail to hold a candle compared to the 3D animations witnessed in the movie. Still however, the graphics are decent enough and the colourful bright levels will grab the kid’s attention right away.

Up the movie is not a game any old gamer should be thinking about. Like we mentioned earlier, the movie by Pixar was created with all ages in mind, but this game is certainly not.  A perfect game to pickup for any young gamers that just watched the movie and they will certainly enjoy the adventure while it lasts. If it was not for the short main quest, this might have actually been a good game.