Last spring the people behind Planet 51 took me on a press trip to Madrid, Spain with other game critics to see the studio where Planet 51 (the movie and the game) was being developed. Planet 51 is an unusual project in many respects...the movie and game were both being produced simultaneously, in house, by the same company.
What was most surprising was the lineage of the company. The developers were heretofore best known for an old favorite game series, Commandos. Hardly a children's title, these war games mixed stragegy with action and a bit of humor as well. The leap to animated children's films and family gaming hardly seemed like the next logical business move, but the lure of Pixar's success must have been a strong muse. The formula seemed like box-office: mix high quality graphics, celebrities, and a script by the same folks who did Shrek and launch it on Thanksgiving weekend when there is nothing else opening for kids and you should have a hit.
Unfortunately, the film has opened to mixed to poor reviews and the video game (published here by Sega) doesn't have much going for it to recommend to parents.
The best thing about the game are the true-to-film graphics. This comes as no surprise to those of us who saw the film being made - the gamemakers had direct access to all the film assets as they were working.
Essentially a car game (hoverbikes, lawnmowers, trucks and cars are all featured) the missions are long and repetitious - and one of our kid testers adds: "Not much fun - each job seemed like a chore."
One of the things I noted was that squeezing the throttle for long periods of time actually made my hand hurt.
I was also surprised by the amount of anti-social behavior in a kids title: You're constantly knocking over fences and intentionally or unintentionally bumping into other people or cars. In one mission, early on, you have to chase after a thief on your hoverbike going round and round through the neighborhood until you finally bump into him enough times to get him to stop.
It would be unfair to single Planet 51 out for this kind of thumb-strengthening, mind-numbing kind of gaming - most kids games follow some variant on this theme. It is precisely this sort of anti-intellectual "fun" that makes parents question the value of video games in the first place. There isn't much humor, no enrichment; just the same old running cars around the track (or over the lawn or through the park) that you've seen since the earliest days of video gaming, just with a prettier (if greener) face.
Xbox360 now has a label called "family games", which Planet 51 garnered, presumably because there is no bloodshed. However, there is more to family gaming than not killing people - and you can hit people with your vehicles, they just don't get hurt. Great.
Children's media should reach higher than Planet 51.
