Charlie and The Chocolate Factory

THE BAD:
-Hideous graphics
-Horrible animation and framerate
-Stupid sound and dialog
-Exaggerated music
-Absymal camera
-Incredibly short
-It's either too easy or rather frustrating
-Nonworthy extras
-Almost every type of job is repeated several times throughout the game
-Those Wonka Bot enemies are insanely annoying, unoriginal, and pointless
-... it's too stupid to be fun for even a little while
-The game leaves you clueless on how to do some things
-It's embarrassing to own
-Your Oompa-Loompa 'friends' have horrible AI

SUMMARY:
The book and movie Charlie and the Chocolate Factory were both a hit, right? But what about the game? At a glimpse, some of you fanboys and fangirls may think, "Cool! I loved the book and the movie, so the game must be awesome!" Well, those people would think wrong. Others may say, "Another game based on a movie? Sorry, but they do nothing for me," or, "What is this? This game will be garbage!" and they're right. Short and simple, don't buy this game, please!

Graphics: 3.8 -- I can't believe the graphics of one of today's PS2 titles could be so ugly! Really now, people aren't supposed to look or move in such an abysmal manner. Charlie himself looks like a balloon-headed monkey, and everyone else looks like those mechanical puppets like you see at Disneyland. He moves like he has an injured knee or ankle and is about as graceful as an overweight mule. Everyone else is stiff like they have severe arthritis (no offense to anyone who has arthritis). And the backgrounds are just barely any better. They are textured and detailed okay, but hardly compared to today's standards. They greatly lack necessary details like lighting and shading, which makes it a tad hard to see. They just feel so crammed and deserted, and that stresses out the camera and messes you up. It all gives the term ‘level design’ a bad name. The effects are probably the worst part. All you really get are a few dim lights and/or bits of what looks like paper confetti, but there are no sparks, no flares, no debris, nothing. When something hits a liquid, it just goes straight through it with no splatter of any nature. The natural effects you should get from what goes on in the factory (like smoke, electricity, or anything) are scarce. So please, don’t waste a second to look at this worthless piece of rubbish.

Sound: 3.6 -- The whole entire sound system of this insignificant waste could use many, many improvements. The music in general is okay, but it just doesn’t suit the feel of the game. It’s way too happy and bouncy for my taste. However, the more ‘traumatic’ levels (those obnoxious ‘Wonkabots’ taking over the factory) are accompanied by tunes far too dramatic. It’s much more fitting for someone’s death than clearing out those robots. And the music itself isn’t too enjoyable at that. But the sound effects, don’t even go there. They are so poorly recorded and are not what this game needs. The sound of a smashed robot sounds more like a pickup truck running over a metal trashcan. The grassier objects make me think of someone crumpling up a sheet of cellophane. No matter what kind of surface you run on, it all sounds like wood. And the noises just don’t match up with the animations well at all. The sound more like they’re coming out of hidden speakers throughout the level when they should be caused by the corresponding animation. And don’t get me started on the voiceovers. Everyone sounds like a kindergarten teacher lecturing a student for bad behavior. And by the shameful way the characters speak, I’m guessing the voice cast didn’t rehearse their script at all. They speak with one weak tone with every word, in every sentence, like they're reading their scripts for the first time. Even if bad sound quality doesn’t bother you, I would avoid this game at all costs.

Handling: 2 -- I don’t think I’ve ever seen a game play so poorly. The camera is downright awful. It jumps and jerks as you’re running, and it struggles more than a fish without gills while you jump to higher platforms. It feels like it’s testing you to see where you’re going! The controls themselves are mediocre. You can get by okay, but the controls are just too slow and not always responsive. They aren’t quite enough for some of the platforming that goes on. And they’re almost useless when dealing with enemies. You also have to pause constantly to change your equipped candy power-up, which you must do clear obstacles. I’d rather assign two or three different powers to the shoulder buttons. But the dumbest part of the power-up system is the limit. You have a small meter that quickly empties as you use the power-ups, leaving you in a difficult situation if it runs out. Which reminds me; the health system is a complete waste of time and stress. When you die, you just start over in another spot in the room, but you pick up exactly where you left off--pointless. And the basic movement controls get annoying. Even just running around is a pain because Charlie is so slow and can’t really run straight. And there are way too many missions that involve killing those obnoxious robots. The enemies often come out of nowhere and attack from behind, giving you little opportunity to attack or escape. So it’s not uncommon to witness a blind death. But the stupid camera is what really messes you up. It doesn’t point where you want it to, even if you do have control over it, resulting in otherwise avoidable death. It’s all because the camera doesn’t like walls, so it stays as far away from them as possible, even if you move it. And it’s extremely difficult to land on small platforms simply because it won’t go where you want it to, even if it’s not forced into a small space. Another element of the atrocious gameplay is controlling several Oompa-Loompas from the film. You are to find them and use the D-Pad to select a command, from your choice of Work, Follow, or Wait. Each Oompa-Loompa has a certain job it can perform, which usually involves repairing machinery, or something like fetching candy for you. But although they can all work at the same time, you can only command one Oompa-Loompa at a time, even in a group of six or more! So if you have five tagging along, and you need them to wait behind for a bit, you have to tell each individual Oompa-Loompa to stay there, rather than just announcing it to the whole party, thus wasting tons of time (which is crucial when it comes to timed platforms). Also, they won't always respond to your commands, which either wastes even more of your time to get their attention, or messes things up when they follow you at a bad and end up falling off of platforms or hurting themselves. Even when they do listen, sometimes they go and work on the wrong objective, while other times they get stuck behind background objects. I liked the concept, but everything, and I mean EVERYTHING, just goes wrong here. Worse still, a lot of the jobs you have to do give too little guidance. They just tell you what to do, but they leave you in the dark on how you actually do it. It took my sister and me two days just to figure out how to put candy in boxes! All the game said was, “Knock the candy out of the trees and put it in the boxes,” and said nothing about how it could be done. It turns out you had to tell the Oompa-Loompas to grab the candy and toss it into the boxes for you, even though there was no tutorial on having them grab candy and such. You'll also be required to throw Everlasting Gobbstoppers to clear certain obstacles and attack enemies. That's great, except for one little problem: Charlie Bucket has the WORST aim ever recorded! There is no way to aim your shots, and therefore, it will take you a few tries to actually hit your target, even when it's a meter or two away from you! Also, if you adjust your position to the slightest angle, you will throw in a completely different direction, and sometimes it will change if you simply jump. Many targets may also be a bit too high, so you'll have to get out of your way to elevate yourself and hit it after countless attempts. This just doesn't work. Overall, combined with the recurring robot-killing missions, confusing tasks, absymal Oompa-Loompas, lacking hand-eye coordination, and terrible camera, you’ll smash you’re PS2 out of frustration from a game that should be quick and easy. You can thank the lazy programmers who set up the controls and made the game far more frustrating than it should be. If you find yourself within twenty feet of it, run away.

Entertainment: 3.3 -- This game is so lame, not even the advertisements could exaggerate the ‘fun’ of it. The levels are kind of clever when they don’t involve robots, but it gets pretty boring after about fifteen minutes. Sure, young elementary school-aged kids will enjoy it, but those kids aren’t really old enough to watch the movie or play a lot of video games. It’s actually kind of fun during the first level, but it’s total garbage after that. There isn’t really much to keep you going, either. And it has such a short number of things to do you’ll regret playing it. The maddening gameplay only worsens it. If you have younger siblings (or kids) who liked the movie, go ahead and rent it for them. It’s so bad that not even all kids will enjoy it.

Features: 1 -- Worthless, completely worthless; that’s what this game is. There are only about five or six levels in this game, each with a very short list of jobs, ranging from collecting candy and having the Oopma Loompas fixing machines to destroying Wonka Bots and protecting your 'little buddies'. It may sound creative at first, but when you play them for yourself you realize it's already done to death in some form, and these copy-cat jobs are all too frequent. The programmers basically recycled all the missions from earlier levels and modified them to make them seem different at the end. Plus, there aren’t even that many tasks to complete before you move on--it’s pathetic. Additionally, there are a few different candy types that you can collect throughout each level. If you find it all, you get a lame prize: a health or power boost! However you only have one chance to get all the candy, because once you’re done with an objective, you’re done, and there’s no going back. Yeah, that’s real smart. Also, when you complete the game, you will be forced to collect these gold W’s in three of the levels, which you would think would be optional. Oh, the candy I mentioned before is not there with the W’s. And once you get all of those, you cannot return to the level ever again. If you get all the W’s, you get ‘the ultimate prize’: a gallery that lets you watch all the movies in the game plus a couple of trailers (when the movie was already in theatres). That is just about the worst prize you could ever put in a game! I mean, you've already seen all those movies, and I see no need to watch them again. And trailers? The movie was already out, so you could easily go to the movie without watching a stupid trailer! I was really hoping to unlock something cool, like ownership of the factory so you can free roam through it. What a disappointment it turned out to be. And if you try to resume playing a completed game, you just end up watching the ending again or the credits, so you can’t replay the game just for leisure (but it’s not like you’d want to, anyway). There is nothing worthwhile about this game. Period.

Replay Value: Moderately Low

Overall: 2.7 -- ‘Cheap’ is the only word to describe this title. The kindergarten-level graphics can provide problems. The sound is absolutely pathetic. And this is some of the worst gameplay I’ve ever experienced, not to mention the huge lack of features. It all comes down to possibly the worst movie-based game to date. I’d rather lick crumbs off a dirty gymnasium floor than play this game again. I am embarrassed and ashamed just for playing this garbage!