Gamesylvania

After reading this review of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie on Chocolate Lemon, I decided it might be fun to dig out my own copy of this game to give it a try. It didn’t fair well.

Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie is an obnoxiously repetitive brawler, aspiring to be one of the worst in the genre. You fight through, literally, dozens of the same enemy; again and again. And, just when you think you’re done, a bunch more show up. It’s painful.

After mashing the B-button for, oh, a minor eternity, you reach the end of the first level. The game’s primary protagonist, Ivan Ooze, shows up to deal out his own brand of pain and then quickly move on. It was here that I wondered if I were doing something wrong. Shouldn’t there be a boss-fight, here? Aren’t I supposed to hit him back, or something? No? Ok… moving on.

At the end of each level is a score round-up, which for me is like, why even bother? I mean, I could write at length on how much I hate point systems in games like this. Since I was about 7 or 8 and first played Super Mario Bros. on the NES, points became completely irrelevant. Here was a game with a story (arguably) that featured an ending. What a novelty! After playing years of arcade-inspired Atari 2600 games, here was a game where the basic underlying premise was not simply to score points but to rescue the princess and finish the game. Why, then, about a decade after Super Mario Bros., are points relevant in an uninspired beat’em up? Because it’s a cheap, easy thrill. In a game that features very little in the way of thrills, cheap or otherwise, you have to do something. But that’s not even the crazy part. What follows next is an absolute, utter mind-blower: another cut-scene.

I’ll give you that it’s necessary to throw in a little bit of mindless exhibition, especially when it grounds in the backstory just in case you hadn’t seen the movie, but this cut scene is hardly “little”. It just goes on and on. Here is, pretty much, this one, entire cut-scene: You learn that Zordon — the chief, bloated-head figure that came to earth eons ago to recruit teenagers from Angel Grove to save the world — has been nearly killed by Ivan Ooze as he destroys the defenseless Command Center. As a result, the Power Rangers have lost their powers (oh noes!) and must go on a quest to find new Ninjetti powers. (I wish I were making this up)
The Rangers travel to Phaedos where Ooze very nearly destroys them with his Tengu Warriors. Dulcea saves them by bestowing them with new ninja powers based on the six ninja animals: White Falcon, Red Ape, Yellow Bear, Blue Wolf, Pink Crane and Black Frog. She then sends them to the Ninjetti Temple to find the Great Power on their own. Along the way, they find themselves blocked by a living dinosaur skeleton which they must fight before defeating four living statues. By destroying the statues, the Great Power is bestowed upon them and they morph into the Power Rangers once again.

Sounds great, eh? Bet that would have made a neat level followed by an awesome boss-battle. Too bad it was just a shitty cut-scene. Press a button, completely skip it and find yourself back on earth, beating up more purple things. What the crap…?

This game makes a lot of confusing, stupid moves, but chief among them is a cut-scene that would have probably made a decent level to fight through. Nevermind that the story is a perpetual train-wreck, this is just lazy, half-assed game design all around. There are only six stages to play through, which may very well be more than enough for most people, but I really do pity the poor, mongrel chid who got this as his only Christmas present. The game takes about an hour, tops, to finish. I guess you could redeem some replay value out of going co-op with some friends, but I’m betting they won’t be your friends very long after playing this. Other issues include the boring, mindless button-mashing and, perhaps the worst offense of all, the tendency of enemies to go off-screen. I hate that the worst. The worst thing about beat’em ups is that a good 80% of the game ends up being played like this:

Off-screen enemies SUCK

Yes, RLY.

And I still don’t know what those kids are doing in that scene. Putting their hands in the air? Waving them like they just don’t care? I don’t know…

From the horribly distinctive sound design to the obnoxiously repetitive and highly unoriginal brawler gameplay, the game just goes down, down, down. The saddest part is I found someone who recorded a normal run through the game on YouTube. Enjoy. I guess.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xaenj5GuMaM]

Spoiler Alert: ZORDON DIES! But then he comes back. *shrugs*

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