Finn and Jake’s Epic Quest touts itself as an action-adventure title, so there alone you know the product is going to be pretty mediocre. In the game you play as either of the titular characters from the Cartoon Network hit. Both Finn and Jake play nearly identical and both share a pool of money and power-ups.
The game takes place in a 3D environment like so many of the multitude of generic dungeon crawlers have used to no end over the years. The game is laid out across four separate world which include the Witch’s garden, Ice Kingdom, Fire Kingdom, and the Land of the Dead. The problem quickly arises that each of the several stages within each land is nearly identical. You could swap them around in any order and have no problem making your way to the end of each. The layouts of each level are just so mundane that they will put most players into a trance which will have you thinking you’ve been playing for a several hours, when only a few minutes have passed.
Visually the game makes good use of the license it’s working with, although this being the umpteenth game based on Adventure Time, that isn’t enough to hold one over anymore. Even though the game looks nice, you will still run across a several problems that were clearly overlooked during testing. Each stage, within each level, take place on what best can be described as the top of a rotating ball. This effect helps give the worlds some depth, but at times can hinder your view. There are also times where you will see a number of ugly tears in the environment where land tiles were placed that don’t quite line up.
As there are two characters, you would expect your partner to aid you in battle, or at the very least stay close. Unfortunately, neither of these things seem to be the case. I have a number of occasion were my A.I. partner (that’s probably being a bit too kind) would get stuck in the environment and get left behind. The only way to get them back was to get caught in an enemy grab that requires your partner to attack to set you free. In these cases they would zoom back into frame and help. On other occasions their walking animation would cut out and they would follow you around like a frozen statue. None of things thing really matter though, as your partner will never so much as raise a hand to help against an enemy, unless the game demands it. 99% of the time they will just pump their arms up in joy as you are waylaid by half a dozen enemies.
Enemies… The game claims that there are “A butt tons of enemies” and this is true. The cast of baddies that the developers have access to from the show is enormous. The problem lies in the fact that there are really only two types of enemies. Type A can be defeated by slamming on the attack button, and type B can be taken down by charging an attack to break their shield and then slamming on the attack button. That’s it, there is nothing more to the game than mindless button mashing. Unlike other dungeon crawlers, like say, Diablo here you won’t even get any cool drops or items from them other than some gold that is essentially useless.
The gold you collect can be used at a number of vendors in the world to purchase power-ups. The thing is, you won’t really ever need to do this as power-ups are very liberally scattered about the stages right out in the open. Before even the halfway point of the game I had racked up 9,999 gold that just sat useless. It’s like the developers took everything from other, better games, and stripped it all down to the most tame and homogeneous pile of goo they could feed to consumers. The game also integrates an old-fashioned lives system, but I only found that out near the end of the game when I collected a heart and wondered what it did. In fact, I only died once during my play-through, and that was my own fault, because I wanted to see what would happen if I fell off the stage.
Major gripes aside, the game does have some pretty nice things that make it stand out. The power-up system is a nice touch, with the game making you collect pages. These pages, in turn become power-ups when you activate them. The really fun this is that you won’t have any idea what a page does until you use it in battle. Of course, once you use the power-up, that page becomes revealed so you know what it is in the future, but there are enough pages to keep you excited about what you will find next throughout the course of the game.
The sound is also top-notch, some of the television show cast reprising their characters. I would have loved to see more voice work involved, as major bosses like the Ice King just make noises during their battle. It’s a tad bit off-putting when Finn and Jake talk about the battle and the camera pans over to a boss that we know from the show, only to make a weak honking noise.
If you are a small child of the television series, then you may find some enjoyment from Finn and Jake’s Epic Quest. Anyone else looking for a good use of the licence or a dungeon crawler with even a modicum of challenge will want to stay away. The game isn’t bad, it’s just so ridiculously safe that it becomes a boring glob of nothing.
PC
Style
Single-player
Developer
NGD Studios
Publisher
Cartoon Network Games
Release Date
April 11th
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