Planet 51 for Xbox 360 Reviews by Gamers

Planet 51 is a so-so budget game with the potential to have been better.

The game is best categorized as a GTA clone, with an obvious comparison to be made to Simpons Hit & Run due to the game being suited for kids.

The Good:

- Art. The game won't win any awards but it looks good enough, assuming you like the cartoon style.
- Performance. Framerate seemed solid. No crashes.
- Driving. The basics of driving around the environment work pretty well, though anyone who dislikes arcade-y physics will have a problem with it.
- Story Missions. There's a decent variety of mission types and mechanics as you play through the story. Most revolve around driving, but there are some on-foot and stealth missions as well.

The Bad:

- Repetitive tasks. These are optional, but if you want all the rewards and achievements you'll have to complete tasks, and they are extremely repetitive. For example, to complete the series of taxi tasks, you'll have to drive the same exact course ten times in a row, with each run requiring 3-4 minutes and the only change between runs that you successively get less and less time.
- No reason to have so many vehicles. You'll collect lots of cars, bikes, trucks, etc., and always have access to all of them, but the only disernible performance difference is speed. Many of the vehicles just seem to be visual variants.
- No mini-map or ability to place a destination marker on the map. This isn't an issue within missions, as arrows show you where to go, but outside of missions it can get confusing trying to reach a destination as you have to keep bringing up the full map.
- Cutscenes. These appear to be using animations from the movie, so they're animated fine, but the voiceover is changed so there is no syncing between sound and visuals. At least they can be skipped.
- Frequent loading screens and no option to install to hard drive.

I really like this genre of game, so had some fun with it, but for most people I say skip it or rent with low expectations.