Completion Time: 6h:40m:00s
Rating: 5/10

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The King of New York

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Do you recall the 2005 hit "Madagascar" and it's follow-up sequels? I do, to a degree. I saw the initial teaser for the first film in theaters before the trailers were actually out, and I was stoked purely because of the font of the title logo. It really lead me to believe this was a movie based on some sort of graphic novel or comic book. I don't know why, looking at it now just gives the feeling of WordArt, but in my memory it had a pop sort of feel? I don't know, that's aside the point, I wasn't really a fan of the franchise and I'm surprised how far it got with follow-on films and multiple television series and spin-offs. And wouldn't you know it? It had a tie-in video game on the GameCube, as you were one to do during the era. Let's take a look, shall we?

It's not a bad logo, but I definitely made something similar in Microsoft Word when I was a kid

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Move It, Move It

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If you're familiar with the movie (not that I am, it's been well over a decade at this point), then you're likely familiar with the places that this game goes to. You start in the zoo, escape to the streets of New York, end up on a ship, and traverse the jungles of Madagascar. Easy as, as far as settings go anyways. And the structure of these levels is pretty intuitive and easy to navigate, which does wonders when trying to make up for the shortcomings of the actual gameplay here. Would you be surprised if I told you that it was a platformer that had difficult to use controls? You wouldn't?! Well, that's probably expected at that point, it's honestly like shooting fish in a barrel when talking about these types of games from the early to mid aughts timeframe. Whether your collecting pearls or fighting crabs or taking on the final boss, it all hinges on the ability to appropriately jump to where you want to go to. And boy is it a tad stiff here.

I can't even begin to tell you what's going on here

To give you a break from the platforming segments with the main characters, we get to hang out with everyone's favorite characters on occasion: the penguins! These little guys have stealth puzzle segments that are actually decent enough to play on the low end, and pretty engaging and fun on the high side. Scooting around a massive cruise ship while struggling to avoid the captain and his crew, picking pockets to unlock doors, hiding in shipping crates to skirt detection. I sort of wish the entire game was this, but alas that cannot be the case. Soon enough, you're back to the other exploits and goings on.

Just smile and wave boys. Smile and wave

The game does try and give you a break during regular gameplay with the lion and his friends by giving you brief mini-game stages that you can play within the actual stages. I recall "Shrek 2" on GameCube doing something similar, but to much better effect. You might be collecting items of food for a banquet, or hopping around to take care of spiders, or even an escort mission with bees. Escorting bees! And if that sounds like a hoot then you might wanna go out and play this game, but I'll sit it out thanks, because they're more like little chores than anything that could be described as "fun".

Escort mission... with bees?!

Once you make your way through the regular levels of the game, you'll eventually make your way to the final boss against the "Foosa Boss", which I guess is some sort of jungle animal? This is a bizarre sort of battle stage that the game hasn't really prepared you for up to this point. Sure, you know how to attack things based on previous small enemies throughout the game, but this gauntlet would've been better met had there been actual minibosses littered earlier in the game. Most I can think of is the zookeeper in the second level, but that's not at all like what this is. At the very least, it isn't a hard fight. Beat him and his summoned minions up a few times and you'll be greeted to a great cutscene with the ugly models of the era. Hurray!

Hey bud? I'm over here

Yikes!

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Completing the Game

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Aside from completing the various levels that you come across, there's only one true metric for completion this time around: coins. Coins, coins, and more coins are what you're gonna need to grab as you visit the levels. In fact, you're probably gonna have to go backwards and revisit areas you've already been to in order to find more coins, because these are used to purchase all of the unlockables in the game. Mini-games that can be played, costume pieces, upgrades; you name it and those monkeys from the movie will sell it to you for the right price. This is a tad annoying, because it can be argued that none of these unlockables are really worth it, but at the very least the mini-games could've given you an opportunity to play as animals you cared about with friends that you cared about when you were a wee little baby. Not much else here though, sorry to say.

Once all these critters understand the value of a functioning economy, it's all over for us

All of this to say that this game kinda sucks. It's a middle of the road platformer that has clunky controls and some obnoxious dialogue at times. Though that's probably to be expected from an early to mid aughts DreamWorks property. That isn't to say that the game is without merit, given that the level design is actually pretty well thought out for a licensed property of the era and they had the foresight to introduce the minimal penguin stealth segments to break up the monotony. I imagine if you had this as a kid and actually really cared for this movie, you probably had a ball. And you certainly could've done worse at the time.

This is another entry in a series where I go through and complete every GameCube game, as it is the largest part of my video game collection. GameCube Games: 31/652