Completion Time: 7h:35m:00s
Rating: 3/10

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An Incredible Feat?

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As we approach the end of the year and I’ve proceeded to cool off from both a ton of October GameCube playthroughs and a major move in my life, I wanted to hop into something easy. I’ve been working hard on setting up the 50th entry of this series anyhow, so I quite literally pulled this one out of a pile of unpacked games at random. I played it a tad back when I first got it, but never made it past the first stage. Not due to any level of difficulty, but rather to just kinda of being… bored? So, if that hasn’t sold you on things already, let’s jump right into it!

"You wanna play through a game and write another blog post?" Yeah, I've got time

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Re-Rise of the Supers

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“The Incredibles” as a movie is one of Pixar’s better outings, and following in a grand tradition that they started from the beginning with “Toy Story”, you’d better believe we’ve got a licensed tie-in on our hands. As opposed to other licensed titles, this being an action game developed simultaneously alongside its source material means that the story of the game is almost one-to-one. Most of the game you play as Bob Paar, Mr. Incredible himself, as you go from his old glory days to a mysterious island to finally saving the day, same as the film. Bits are expanded on to flesh out otherwise minimal scenes, but nothing too out of the ordinary in that regard. We aren’t inventing entirely other spaces to pad out the playtime of the game or anything like that.

Get outta here, loser, I'm gonna be late for my wedding!

As I said, you primarily fight as Mr. Incredible himself. He’s strong, so he can deliver punches, throw enemies, and pick up some environmental objects to sling them around. If you charge up enough you can land heavier attacks with the “Y” button as well, which is good given that eventually you can’t help but feel swarmed as the game throws everything at you. Even if it isn’t trying to mix things up a whole lot. A few stages (very few) will have you play as Mrs. Incredible as well, and while she isn’t as strong, her move set is remarkably similar. The best two differences here are the ability to grab enemies from much farther away than her husband, and her stationary Y attack which has her arms spin like helicopter blades to clear swathes of enemies. Even still, while the occasional diversion from just straight punching and throwing is fine, things get dull quick. The enemy variants aren’t all that varied, and the “Y” attacks don’t often feel like they’re anymore powerful than the regular attacks.

Helicopter, helicopter

I commend the game for attempting to provide even more variety in gameplay by having segments with the kids, Violet and Dash, showing off their unique movesets. And what’s even better: they don’t fight! An actual break from the monotony of the game is well appreciated, or at least that’s what I thought. There’s only one real stage with Violet, that being a stealth mission through the jungle a la “Metal Gear Solid”, and its perfectly fine. But that’s it. They couldn’t be bothered to flesh things out all that much, so you get the one level that’s about seven minutes long and then you’re done with her. Dash, on the other hand, has about 3 stages and they are an actual nightmare. I thought the mach sections of 2006’s “Sonic the Hedgehog” reboot were bad… and yeah, they still are, they’re the worst. But these frustrate me almost as much, the only benefit that you don’t have lives to lose in “The Incredibles”. Dash is impossible to control as you run in a straight line, dodging obstacles, racing against the clock, and fighting the controls in tunnels. These stages perform abominably, and often I even ran into something and had no idea what it even was. Makes it hard to doge the second time around. All the funnier that the absolute best part of the game, in my opinion, is a pinball style level with BOTH the kids where you roll around in this force field ball Violet has made in an open area solving vague puzzles and running over enemies to defeat them. The momentum and physics are surprisingly well done, and I was having a ball (pun very much intended) with it. All the worse is that this is the only time this mechanic comes up in the entire game!

Colonel, I'm a teenage girl and I'm being shot at!

Is this... fun? Am I having fun?

As I mentioned prior, the regular stages of this game are insanely repetitive and sometimes come with vague rules or timers that aren’t alluded to. By far the penultimate stage of the game, featuring Mr. Fantastic once again, is one of the worst things I’ve played in a long time, just by virtue of how incredibly boring it is. Already you’re running through grey hallways, punching numerous enemies and attempting (and failing) to throw objects at flying goons. But it also expects you to platform by grabbing onto the occasional crane set lowered from the ceiling and swinging between them. The momentum here doesn’t work, and you can’t control the swaying of the arm, so it’s all based around timing. There were multiple DIFFERENT parts of the level where this was a featured mechanic and each time I tried and failed for an exhaustingly long time. Hell, I had to play this stage again for collectibles that I’ll mention later, and I still wasn’t any better at this game’s awful attempts and “fun navigation” of an area. Not to mention the mini boss, which is a rolling tank that has appeared once or twice in the game up to this point, comes up FIVE times in this one level alone. And this is a boring fight, because you can only damage it by chucking back one of his own bombs at him three times. But each time you hit him with one, he goes through the same three moves that you must dodge. The fight has nothing to it but takes probably 3-4 minutes each time of mind-numbing button pressing. The level even has the gall to psyche you out with it! I was clearing out a room of bad guys, and once they were all gone, one of the tanks pops up through the floor. OK, I’ve gotta destroy this thing again, whatever. So nearly five minutes later, he blows up, and then ANOTHER one comes up in its place, and I gotta do the same fight again. And to add insult to injury, later in the level the game pulls the same trick! What is going on here? Did someone think this was a fun concept? This awful pattern-recognition machine that pops up one after another? Give me the goons again, at least their patterns are more unpredictable, and you fight multiple at the same time. This is just dull.

Get the hell out of here you awful thing!

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Completing the Game

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What would this form of game be without collectables to unlock concept art? Not much of one, that’s for sure! So, I had to do a tad bit of trial and error with the collectable “I’s” that you can find in each stage, because nowhere does it state that each regular level has exactly 3 to be found. Thankfully I started encountering these floating red icons early, as directly behind you in the very first level is the initial collectable item. Each one you grab directly correlates to a specific art item in the gallery that you can access at any time from the pause menu. The biggest flaw of this generation is that the display could never really support the resolution of unlockable content like this. So, while I feel like some of these COULD be cool to look at, things are blurred to an unsatisfying degree.

The i's have it

You’ve made it through and collected 3 of those floating red “I’s” for every story level in the game, so why are there still 16 missing images? Well, this is where the unlockable “Battle Mode” comes into play. It unlocks through regular play of the campaign, and can also be accessed from the pause screen at any time, though the game doesn’t tell you that there are collectables to be found here. It just feels like a bonus stage, after all. You play as Bob and Helen as you make your way through 10 back-to-back rounds of overwhelming enemy types. While the first two levels just provide health pickups on beating them, each subsequent level gives you a collectable at the end of the round. That means one playthrough of the battle mode as Bob will gain you 8 concept art unlocks, and then another playthrough of the mode as Helen will give you an additional 8 as you finally bring the gallery to a close. Not difficult or arduous necessarily, but the game obfuscates this fact to an insane degree. Thankfully I check all this as I go for the sake of writing these blogs or I would’ve written the “Battle Mode” off as a goofy practice arena without taking it any further.

Before I forget, each stage also tells you how many calories you've burned, which is fun!

This game has some fun, catchy music behind it, and Sam Jackson’s narration throughout is fun to be sure. But outside of that, there’s next to no fun to be had here. Things are a bit too much of a slog, the platforming is a chore, and the combat is repetitive. Even attempting to introduce different playstyles through the other Paar family members does nothing more than infuriate you (sans that cool pinball stage). I’m aware of another “The Incredibles” GameCube game based on the stinger at the end of the initial movie, but I’ve gotta take a break from this franchise because I can’t imagine that’s any better than what I played here. Yet who knows. I’ve been proven wrong before.

This is another entry in a series where I go through and complete every GameCube game, as it is the largest part of my video game collection. GameCube Games: 49/652