POSTED 7/12/13


ADVENTURE TIME: EXPLORE THE DUNGEON BECAUSE I DON'T KNOW!

D3 Publisher
PS3 (also on Xbox 360, Wii U, 3DS)

Once upon a time... NOOOOOOOOOO! WE ALREADY HEARD THAT STORY BEFORE!

We’ve also played this game before. Kinda.

We didn’t plummet through some baked goods-infused candy time portal, rather we played Diablo. Actually, bringing that up here is insulting to Diablo. So we’ll just have to insult Gauntlet instead. Sorry Gauntlet.

Adventure Time, the cartoon series, is several shades of lumpin’ awesome. This game, we’d dearly love to type with Lumpy Space Princess ambivalence in our fingers, isn’t.

You have to ponder how anybody could go wrong with such a wondrous imagination splooge of twisted brilliance to work with, but it’s happened. So ponder away.

Presented as a kinda 16-bit homage, you and up to three accomplices variously take the reins of Finn the Human, Jake the Dog, Marceline the Vampire Queen or Cinnamon Bun (with others joining in later – you can swap within in-betweeny bits) and, by order of Princess Bubblegum, hit the massive (and samey) dungeons beneath Ooo where the land’s enemies are imprisoned. Lots of them.

But they’re breaking out – although most seem to have gone unfed as they’re rather skeletal, so don’t put up much fight. You wield your primary weapon and an array of secondary ones to take a gradual stream of escapees out. Level after level, as if trudging slowly over wet sand, until every tenth one at least mixes things up with a boss battle kinda thing. Woo.

While those in-betweeny bits are fun, as is the occasional spesh weapon eruption plus the music and real voice actors doing their real voices – well, real Ooo voices - the actual game is dull, Now that’s a word nobody could ever associate with Adventure Time, the cartoon series.

Jake the Dog once mused, “Dude, sucking at something is the first step towards being sort of good at something.” We long for future gameificationated redemption.

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