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IGN Review of Biker Mice from Mars
The bad license game cash in is so commonplace that it doesn't even faze us anymore. What does make us look twice is when a bad license game cash in that is nearly 15 years old comes out. Behold, Biker Mice from Mars for the Nintendo DS from developer Full Fat. It's a horrible game about a stupid show that hasn't aired in America for over a decade.
Biker Mice from Mars was one of the forerunners of the shows that tried to cash in on the success of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. It was there before Street Sharks and Extreme Dinosaurs (both of which are ridiculous and awesome in their own rights). It makes sense that with the success of the TMNT revival, the hog riding rodents would try their hand (paw?) at making a come back. That comeback never made it past Europe though. The mice started off in the UK, and instead of coming to America, seemed to move in the opposite direction towards Sweden and Finland. The premise is simple, so simple that the title pretty much covers it. They're mice. They ride motorcycles. They're not from Earth. Oh, and they fight evil cat aliens.
The game is part side scrolling brawler, and part 3D motorcycle racer, making the game two types of awful. The combat missions are level after level of bad collision detection and frustrating gameplay. Fighting villains varies between effortless and annoying. Sometimes the screen will be filled with one-punch goons, jumping and rolling around the screen. There's a significant delay time when the character gets hit, so anytime we got surrounded by people we were caught, getting punched repeatedly before we could even move.
More annoying is the fact that when the enemies are dodging, they're invincible. So just because some cat decided to roll, he doesn't die from getting shot with a laser gun. We don't care if the cat is really good at doing summersaults; he just got a laser to the face! There are only a couple different types of enemies, so the same damn guys keep coming up. It's especially weird when the game heads to Earth and the bad guys are humans. How many guys with blue Mohawks that wear nothing but overalls can there possibly be?
The motorcycle races are just as bad. They're confusing to begin with since the objectives are never stated. Are we racing somebody? Should we be shooting something? Turns out, the only thing we're really racing is the clock. There are guys on motorcycles that can be shot at for more time, but it's not clear who they are because they're unrecognizable. For all we know they could just be fellow biker mice that we're road raging on. The controls are way too loose for the bikes, and so collecting powerups is a crap shoot. The bikes swerve and bump into things with just the slightest touch. It would be difficult, but then our bike would crash into a bunch of missile powerups and we'd have enough ammo to just shoot bikers so much we never run out of time. The landscapes are dull and lifeless. That's fine for Mars but even when the races go to Earth it looks like a barren wasteland.
For a game based on a cartoon, we expected some voicework, maybe the catch phrase of the rambunctious rodents, "Rock 'n ride!" However not a single voice is heart. There isn't even the annoying one liner from whatever character is selected. Come on, it's not like Rob Paulsen or the other voice actors are big celebrities, a little bit of dialogue would have at least made the game feel like we were playing the show, and not some generic game pretending to be about the series.
Sound effects are a joke for Biker Mice. Punching the look-alike bad guys results in varied oofs and grunts. The sound the talking cats make is awfully similar to the sound the humans make. We don't expect a burly street fighting meathead to whimper and mewl when he's knocked out.
The similar sound effects make it even more confusing to tell the enemies apart, since they're all so generic looking that it's impossible to tell who is a cat, mouse, or human. Many of the levels have humans and cats attacking in some sort of bizarre coalition of stupid. The humans are sometimes hillbilly hooligans, and sometimes jetpack wearing super agents (a strange dichotomy to be sure). It's like the developers didn't even know what the hell was going on, or when it was appropriate to use what enemy.
©2007-10-16, IGN Entertainment, Inc. All Rights Reserved
Biker Mice from Mars was one of the forerunners of the shows that tried to cash in on the success of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. It was there before Street Sharks and Extreme Dinosaurs (both of which are ridiculous and awesome in their own rights). It makes sense that with the success of the TMNT revival, the hog riding rodents would try their hand (paw?) at making a come back. That comeback never made it past Europe though. The mice started off in the UK, and instead of coming to America, seemed to move in the opposite direction towards Sweden and Finland. The premise is simple, so simple that the title pretty much covers it. They're mice. They ride motorcycles. They're not from Earth. Oh, and they fight evil cat aliens.
The game is part side scrolling brawler, and part 3D motorcycle racer, making the game two types of awful. The combat missions are level after level of bad collision detection and frustrating gameplay. Fighting villains varies between effortless and annoying. Sometimes the screen will be filled with one-punch goons, jumping and rolling around the screen. There's a significant delay time when the character gets hit, so anytime we got surrounded by people we were caught, getting punched repeatedly before we could even move.
More annoying is the fact that when the enemies are dodging, they're invincible. So just because some cat decided to roll, he doesn't die from getting shot with a laser gun. We don't care if the cat is really good at doing summersaults; he just got a laser to the face! There are only a couple different types of enemies, so the same damn guys keep coming up. It's especially weird when the game heads to Earth and the bad guys are humans. How many guys with blue Mohawks that wear nothing but overalls can there possibly be?
The motorcycle races are just as bad. They're confusing to begin with since the objectives are never stated. Are we racing somebody? Should we be shooting something? Turns out, the only thing we're really racing is the clock. There are guys on motorcycles that can be shot at for more time, but it's not clear who they are because they're unrecognizable. For all we know they could just be fellow biker mice that we're road raging on. The controls are way too loose for the bikes, and so collecting powerups is a crap shoot. The bikes swerve and bump into things with just the slightest touch. It would be difficult, but then our bike would crash into a bunch of missile powerups and we'd have enough ammo to just shoot bikers so much we never run out of time. The landscapes are dull and lifeless. That's fine for Mars but even when the races go to Earth it looks like a barren wasteland.
For a game based on a cartoon, we expected some voicework, maybe the catch phrase of the rambunctious rodents, "Rock 'n ride!" However not a single voice is heart. There isn't even the annoying one liner from whatever character is selected. Come on, it's not like Rob Paulsen or the other voice actors are big celebrities, a little bit of dialogue would have at least made the game feel like we were playing the show, and not some generic game pretending to be about the series.
Sound effects are a joke for Biker Mice. Punching the look-alike bad guys results in varied oofs and grunts. The sound the talking cats make is awfully similar to the sound the humans make. We don't expect a burly street fighting meathead to whimper and mewl when he's knocked out.
The similar sound effects make it even more confusing to tell the enemies apart, since they're all so generic looking that it's impossible to tell who is a cat, mouse, or human. Many of the levels have humans and cats attacking in some sort of bizarre coalition of stupid. The humans are sometimes hillbilly hooligans, and sometimes jetpack wearing super agents (a strange dichotomy to be sure). It's like the developers didn't even know what the hell was going on, or when it was appropriate to use what enemy.
©2007-10-16, IGN Entertainment, Inc. All Rights Reserved