To celebrate the second return of Futurama on TV (even if i’m not expecting much given how these modern resurrections-continuations of beloved animated TV series-franchises, but who knows, i’m remaining cautiously semi-optimistic), time to take a look at its forgotten – and by now quite rare – PS2/X-Box tie-in videogame, simply called “Futurama”.
And what it might as well be the only Futurama videogame, since there’s not much to say about the mobile only Futurama: Worlds Of Tomorrow, besides it being a cheap and shallow cash grab akin to many other free-to-play tycoon simulators, like Simpsons Tapped Out, maybe a little more complete since it had a combat system in it from the start, but still, mostly a shallow time waster very heavy on aggressively try to make you fork out cash for anything of “substance” available.
Then again, it’s not like you can play it anymore, the servers were closed for real (as in they were announced to be closing in 2022) this year on the 9th of March.
Developed by Unique Development Studios (a Swedish company with a portfolio mostly loaded with racing games, tie-ins racing games, and folded pretty much after they released this Futurama game), Futurama is – as one could assume being an early 2000s tie-in game from the PS2/X-Box – a third person platformer/shooter with a cel shaded style look.
Which is quite the shift from its initial plans of a point and click adventure for PC and GBA (?!), changed at the request of Matt Groening itself, whom – as the rest of the writers and voice actors from the show – was quite involved in the creation of the game.
The plot sees Professor Farnsworth selling Planet Express to MOM’s megacorp (again, i might add), thus giving her control over 50 % of the global business industries, which obviously leads to her become supreme overlord of Earth, enslaving the humans and using robots to patrol the streets so nobody breaks the curfew, and our guys trying to escape… after repairing the spaceship and solving other various obstacles thrown their way by Mom herself and her stoogey triplets.
If the gameplay descriptor or “platformer-shooter” sounds like Ratchet & Clank with a license attached to it….it’s really not, despite how cool that could have been, it’s actually more akin to Tomb Raider and Prince Of Persia in terms of platforming, since you have an “important” (it feels heavier than it should, regardless if you’re playing as Bender, Fry or Leela) single short jump and you can grab on to some ledges, so you better judge distances well as there’s fall damage too.
Shooting it’s what you’d expect from the PS2 era of gaming, as in don’t expect cover shooting or RE 4 style aiming, i feel this might need to be reminded to younger videogame perusers, because you can shoot, charge your shot, lock on and strafe, there’s a small selection of weapons (a laser pistol, a shotgun, a tommy gun and a “rail gun”) and that’s about it in terms of mechanics.
You have a melee weapon so you can save ammunition on the crates/containers hiding ammo and health pick-ups, but you might as well not, since ammo isn’t scarce, at all.
…. This is at least for Fry’ levels (which include a not good on-rails shooter section on a chickenwalker), as you can also play as Bender and Leela in the levels designated to them, and they have their own unique moves and abilities, devoid of gunplay or any ranged attacks.
Bender’s levels are the more typical ones you’d expect from a platformer, and include various references and jokes, more often looking/spoofing at Crash Bandicoot, with an entire level being a chase sequence where the camera faces forward to let you see the giant boulder running towards you, stuff like the knock-off “Piranha Plants Lilypads” and how there’s no really much focus on exploration, as in, yes you can explore and most likely will for collectables, but as you progress the bridge that led you there collapses, or a door closes behind you after the checkpoint has been saved.
Bender has the Crash spin (with a longer, more powerful version as a special move), plus a Wario-esque shoulder tackle and butt stomp, which you’d think would be used for enviromental puzzles or to activate switches but nope, it’s just used at the very end to deal with some bots, so it does feel like
they wanted to do far more with Bender in terms of design and challenges, but had to throw the game together quickly, as it’s usually the fare for licensed videogame titles, and had the usual obligation to use all the main characters from the show and make you control them.
Leela’s gameplay feels even more like Tomb Raider, the jumping already felt like that, but she can also roll to evade, kick, punch, do a special move when you have power globes (like Bender), and her levels take place on a tribal aztec-styled temple populated by mystical stuff like undead skeleton warriors (to the pleasure of James Stephanie Sterling), warlocks and more skeleton warriors, while you solve fairly banal memory puzzle games often involving jumping over lava pits that spit out fireballs, or activate levers in a certain order to unlock door.
Jumping is reliable but not perfect, as sometimes it’s easy to overshoot or undershoot jumps on moving platforms (like the roaming crocodiles in the sewer level), nothing too egregious but controls and collisions could have been tighter, as there’s some collision detection issues, and sometimes i’ve seen the suicide bomber pig rats (in one of the early Fry levels) drop into the floor due to a bug, this happening more than once too.
Same as the camera, not great, but nothing too egregiously bad in most cases.
For a lark, you play as Zoidberg in one level only that’s just the Hog Wild level of the original Crash Bandicoot on PS1, and once you win it, Zoidberg is – as usual – abandoned. Fitting he gets the joke level as his only appearance and relevance.
It would be cute if it wasn’t worse than the boar levels from the original Crash Bandicoot. ;(
So yeah, the game overall it’s derivative of other platformers, the level design is nothing special, arguably banal for most intents and purpose, and even for the time it’s more antiquated than one would expect (which i guess fits Futurama’s retrofuture, though i doubt it’s a conscious stylistic choice), as the game uses a live system and 2D plaftorm-style collectables system where it awards you an extra life every 25 main collectable items (money, gems or gold bars) you get in each level.
The upside is that you can easily regain the lives lost if the checkpoint had you with 24 or 48 “monies” collected, the downside is that there really should not be a lives system in a game like this released in 2003. Especially since the game does ramp the difficulty in a noticeable way without much ado, like already in third level the enemies are packing heat, so yeah, feels unnecessary, it’s not really fun having to re-do a long level because you died a bunch of times on a difficult part or due to level design throwing some cheap shots (like instakill turret fire), which isn’t an issue until the Leela levels and the latter part of the game in general.
Then again in the intro level you’re killed deliberately for a joke, so the Professor can load up an identical clone of you with the same everything from his toaster-looking contraption, and the lives are represented by toasters, but i still feel this was more the writer using a joke to potentially excuse an antiquated design choice such as a limited numbers of lives.
I mean, kudos for committing to the bit and also having some level actually feature the famous “suicide booths” from the series, which you can enter and be killed by if you don’t immediatly step out, but that’s odd fanservice that i could have done without, i’d rather wish that effort put instead on level variety or refining the gameplay, maybe even in letting you remap the controls, instead of the clunky but workable control scheme you’re given.
in terms of presentation CG cutscenes were pretty nice for the time, the cel shading it’s decent and it fits the game perfectly, the game does look fairly decent-to-good for the time, the voice acting by the original American VAs is here as well (the game does have multiple languages and multiple dubs, including the italian one, which is nice) and it’s excellent, shame the game has performance issues, with fairly common framerate dips and chugs, often at seemingly random, when there’s not much on screen at all. I wonder if the X-Box version is more stable in this regard.
The writing feels consistent with the one in the TV series, as it’s written by Futurama (and Simpson) regular writer J. Stewart Burns, though the final result it’s decent but not incredible, some really good jokes, decent references and meta-humour but not the best Futurama can offer.
Still, quite good stuff for a fan of the series, that it can’t be denied.
The game takes about 7/8 hours to finish, which is fine, it’s on the shorter side, the problem is the lack of any real “replay value”. This is admittely the kind of game that “back in me days” would have been a decent rental from the video/videogame stores, as in you would be glad of having rented it instead ofblowing your allowance on something that does feel throwaway.
Yes, each level has also a number of more or less hidden Nibblers to find, and collecting all of them in each level… doesn’t reward you with much, just the FMV sequences that open or close a level, and the loading screens with the Futurama advertising for absurd in-universe drinks, shops and food.
Which are often the same you’ve already seen in the TV show, so yeah, why even bother, since there’s no in-game achievement system of sorts, and despite the end level result screen giving you a title of sorts, there’s no real grading system or incentive to also collect all the valuables and kill all enemies in a level, or replay the level in general. Not that there’s a level select or a new game plus.
Yep. There is some extra promo material to be found in the gallery and unlocked, but it mostly just the stuff you’ve already seen when playing the game, nowadays there might as well be NO extra at all since you can watch the cutscenes on Youtube, and even back then these were meager rewards.
Technically solid, sporting decent cel shading and good (for the time) CG cutscenes, with the backing of the original cast of voice actors, a funny script penned by writers that did work on the series, Futurama The Videogame it’s kind of a missed opportunity, because with less clunky controls, a more fleshed out gameplay (maybe one that included swapping in real time between the 3 playable protagonists and not jush having their own delegated levels would have helped) and some actual replay value, i could have bumped it to “good”, but even as today Futurama The Videogame is just decent.
It’s fine.
Even if the gameplay is typical, arguably too typical (and surprisingly old fashioned), the “non-descript” incarnated, going for the tried and true without fleshing out or expanding upon the bread fundamentals in a way that also uses the license well/to its advantage…. it’s an innocuos 6 out of 10, if i were to give it a star rating or anything that will be taken as the only thing i said about the game, despite the review being 3 pages long. IF.
There was no follow up/sequel game, but the cutscenes from the game were cut together, retitled as “Futurama The Lost Episode” and included (with commentary) in the extras on the DVD release for the series’ second film, The Beast With A Billion Backs. Nice enough, i’d say.
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