Jeremy Jastrzab
06 Dec, 2005

As the merry season rolls round every year, everyone tries to get in on the fun, action and money. Not to be out done by the given game releases associated with movie releases, Dreamwork’s big, ugly green hero has been given a share of the limelight. Despite not having a movie release of his own, Shrek and the gang from Far, Far Away are going to all out battle with their latest release Shrek SuperSlam. Rather than traversing through the plotlines of the previous movies, Shrek SuperSlam is an entirely original title that takes a lot of the established characters and throws them into an arena where they all slam their way through anyone in their way.

Essentially, Shrek SuperSlam is taking the multiplayer, multilevel, super-destructive chaos that is the 3-D brawler, as pioneered by games like Powerstone and refined to it’s zenith by Super Smash Bros. Melee. It’s got the characters and it’s got the backdrop but does it have the right intention and objective in mind? The game starts right by offering a decent selection of modes. The single player has a story mode, challenge mode, melee mode, training mode and access to the trophy room.

The amount of modes is acceptable but their lasting appeal is not. The story mode consists of about eight short stories that Shrek, Fiona, Gingerbread Man, Pinocchio, Puss-in-Boots and Donkey are reciting to Donkey’s offspring (and what a freaky bunch they are), to try and get them to sleep. By stories, we mean a series of two-minute battles where a player only needs to win to progress. They start of nicely with typically Shrek-like humorous and satiric scenarios but given that there are eight of them and there is virtually no challenge up until the last two, this mode can be easily wiped through in less than an hour.


Where as the story mode has very little substance, the Mega Challenge mode has a lot more meat (but still no potatoes). There are three kinds of activities performed. The first basic challenge where you use what’s at your disposal to complete a specified objective. These range from protecting certain objectives to beating your opponent a certain way. The second is a tournament where you have to beat a certain amount of opponents in a row under a specified condition. The third is a bonus that includes activities like racing. You won’t get through it in an hour but it can be done over a lazy weekend or a few afternoons. The main objective through this is to complete “clusters” of challengers to unlock more playable characters and levels.

Outside of these two main modes, there is a melee mode that allows you to choose your opponents and stage, where you’ll all be thrown in for two minutes. There is a training mode that takes you through most of what the fighting system has to offer and this to can be completed in a very short amount of time. Finally, there is a trophy room that Shrek can wander, toss around whatever trophies have been won or view some of the Smash Bros. like titles. Eg. First Slam, Holding the lead for the last 60 second and Not using a Block. Interestingly, we achieved 90% of the titles in the first hour of play.

The fighting system is a case of style over substance. It sells itself as Smash Bros. with a decent variety of characters but tends to play a little bit more like Powerstone. You’re place in an arena, of which there are roughly twenty, and the objective of your character is to perform a “slam” on the opponent. You build up your slam meter with a series of short-stringed combos and throws. Once it turns red, you can unleash you move (triangle on PS2) and watch, as the opponents are pinballed around the stage. Each stage is almost completely destructible and each has numerous items that you can pick up.


For what it lacks in depth, Shrek SuperSlam makes up in the way you can just pick it up and play. Sure, experienced fighters and anyone who’s bothered to learn some of the system such as blocking and evading will be at an advantage over button-mashers and casuals but just like the Hammer in the original Smash Bros., there’s enough here to provide ground for everyone. In the very least, the controls are suitably responsive and the game is much more polished and coherent than the preview version that we played.

The highlight of the game is the use of the Shrek license. Despite being way too short, the story provides everything that was likeable about the movies and the use of the stages is particularly impressive. The character roster is pretty big, with over twenty characters. You’ve got most of the main ones from the movies plus a couple of extras. It’s just a shame that some characters are doubled-up. An unlockable unicorn creature (named Anthrax?) is virtually identical to Donkey while the Dark Knight is merely a slower version of Prince Charming. However, the stages look to have been paid particular attention to and are very good. They’ve all got some interesting nuances like when a character is slammed out of the tavern, they’ll walk in the front door or there is even a stage where the giant gingerbread man is carrying a cake and you’re fighting on the cake.

The astounding thing about the single player modes is that they’re incredibly easy and there is no real increase in difficulty as you progress. The only real source of trouble sometimes is when you’re pitted against three opponents at once and they’re all on the same side. You can’t tweak the difficulty and this is part of the reason why you can wipe through the game so easily. The AI is not particularly robust and they only really pose a challenge in three-on-one scenarios or with the uncanny nature of their slams being very accurate (if you allow them to pull it off).


The single-player modes will struggle to last a week but there is always the multiplayer mode. Here you can get up to three friends and either go solo or in teams under numerous different kinds of specifications. While some multiplayer games can last a long time, the main factor that would cause you to keep Shrek SuperSlam in your machine is purely dictated by how much you like anything to do with Shrek. The game will struggle to keep anyone outside of the hardcore base or the under-10’s. Those who don’t belong in this group will find that Shrek SuperSlam will not hold them for any great length of time, especially when there are games that have taken this genre and done a much better job.

Graphically, the game can’t compete with the movies but it does a very decent job in recreating the Shrek world, with the characters and stages looking very authentic. The characters don’t really have the detail and range of animation that we may be used to but they retain their form and are all lively and vibrant. The environments and stages are particularly impressive. They’re very colourful and vibrant but they all have a lot of damage that can be caused to them. Battles can get quite chaotic but the frame rate remains stable. Sound-wise, the characters have their original actors maintained and the dialogue is suitably sharp. It would’ve been nice if they were fleshed out a bit more, given that the rest of the sounds are fairly mediocre and unnoticeable.

Overall, Shrek SuperSlam is not necessarily a bad game. It makes reasonably good use of the license and the genre but it has very little value to anyone who isn’t a Shrek nut and very little to no challenge for anyone over the age of ten. It’s good for pick-up-and-play or to rent when the younger cousins come over to visit but in essence, there are few redeeming reasons to actually purchase this game.

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