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By Keith B (23rd Apr 2007)

A few years ago I was shocked to discover a promotional poster for some mindless romantic comedy. On it were all the usual descriptors�"“Great laughs, great heart,” “Laugh-out-loud funny!”�"picked from a pile of most likely less than kind reviews. Most interestingly, though, was the poster’s prominently displayed quotation “Surprisingly enjoyable.” At first I had assumed the promoters had not understood the backhanded nature of the review: I thought it would suck, the journalist seemed to confess, but it didn’t. Soon after I realized the ingenuity of the film’s promoters, who had contextually reworked the quotation: All of you who think this will suck, they seemed to be saying, should see the film anyway; you might even like it. And while both seem valid interpretations of the same two words, that phrase perfectly summarizes my feelings for The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy: It’s a surprisingly enjoyable game. I thought it would suck, but it didn’t; you probably think that it sucks, but it doesn’t.

The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy is based upon a slightly morbid children’s show of the same name. Ported from the GameCube, Grim Adventures is more or less identical to its sister-console’s forerunner. Controls have been revamped, but that’s about it. The game follows Billy, Mandy, and their enslaved friend Grim, the aptly named, scythe-wheeling grim reaper, who had lost his freedom to them in a foolhardy game of chicken over their hamster’s life. In the game, Grim has lost his vulgarly named Mojo balls (and, yes, this is a children’s title), which leads to general mayhem and mob rule in their formerly happy town. The only way to rope this violence in, apparently, is with a healthy dose of more violence. Fighting fire with fire does work in this topsy-turvy world, I guess, paradoxical though it may seem.

Gameplay is generally good, though single-player action wears thin pretty quickly. Players are best advised to call over a few friends and employ the far-headier two-to-four player mode. You are either Billy, Mandy, Grim, or their social-inferior-cum-chum Irwin. While it’s evident that the game’s designers tried to some extent to make each character different, most changes seem pretty superficial. Sure, voice-overs are unique and each character is programmed with several specific moves. In reality, though, most players will feel little difference between the brawls of Billy and the thrashings of Irwin, the jumps of Grim and the hops of Mandy. This is a shame, considering the missed opportunity for intelligent character selection: maybe tubby little Irwin would have been the right choice for low-slung levels, just as Grim’s height might have been better for others, and so forth.

The game features forty-some levels, all of which are impressively interactive, neither too short nor too long, and generally well constructed, though sometimes painfully redundant; a few unlockable games; and a great head-to-head mode, though total game completion will take most game-savvy children, to say nothing of obsessive adults, a mere ten hours to complete. The vast majority, if not all of the game, is spent fighting. Most battles are one to one, though frequently you will be pitted against numerous opponents, making action at times pretty intense. During multiplayer competition, the game’s strongest playmode, up to ten characters can be featured on screen, leading to some crowded shoulder-to-shoulder action. As you progress through the game, loony new players and opponents, all imported from the television series, will be unlocked: thus Mogar, the guitar-wielding Kiss knock-off, shows up, as do General Skarr, the one-eyed post-military senior citizen, and Jack O’Latern, the gourd-headed trickster.

Ported from the GameCube, Grim Adventures shows surprisingly few signs of sloppy conversion. Then again, with the exception of the Wii controllers, the game shows surprisingly few signs of adaptation at all (evidenced most clearly by the fact that you avoid the Wii controllers altogether if you have a GameCube controller lying around). Players use the control stick mostly, shaking it violently for aggressive attacks, or Wiimote buttons, employed for jumping and throwing makeshift weapons littered throughout the game. As you approach the final kill in each scene, the camera will zoom in, at which point you’re required somewhat tediously to aim the Wiimote’s sensor at the screen in an often futile attempt at hitting randomly placed objects. At other times, players will quickly need to replicate a button-hammering combo. Mojo balls, collected throughout the level, add up, filling your mojo meter once or twice over and allowing you to perform either a winner-injure-all mojo smackdown or a winner-kill-all mojo meltdown. In general, though, players will find the wonky controller scheme a bit superfluous: the logic behind the fight scenes is often impenetrable, such is the thrashing philosophy of the Wiimote. Most will likely opt for the GameCube controls. This might even be recommended.

Graphically the game is good if not terribly progressive. This isn’t really a shot against the designers: the show has an absurdist, haphazard-animation aesthetic, and the designers at Midway have done their best (though I’m sure this wasn’t a great challenge) to replicate it. When in Rome, I suppose. On the upside, the game compensates for its simple visuals by improving gameplay animation. Rarely are there troublesome blips, distracting loading delays, or vanishing scenography. The camera, though not the finest aspect of the game’s production, follows play well, even during those notoriously difficult to design and track multiplayer fighting scenes. The game’s sound likewise doesn’t break any new ground, though it’s clear the designers put a decent amount of thought into the game’s audioscape. Music is passable while voice-overs are absurd�"in a good way. Even old Weird Al Yankovic, pressed for work one assumes, is given considerable voice-over time as the battle-scene commentator. At the very least, the game should be credited for its moderate form of shtick-comedy unemployment insurance. One assumes Carrot Top is next in line at the videogame welfare office.

The game is generally pretty tightly packaged, though players will grumble about a few of the game’s quirks. The largest single problem or, at the very least, distraction is the camera’s stationary angle. The game, though three dimensional, relies almost wholly on altered two-dimensional view: imagine a standard platforming set-up, then move the camera up and over the action slightly. The game’s use of the third dimension is about as impressive as a five-second drawing of a cube. The camera seems to be moving along a zip line, following action while maintaining maybe an overly dramatic distance. This proves useful during multiplayer fight scenes, but its ultimate value will be determined by the size of your television screen rather than its own merits.

The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy is definitely a good game, well worth its rental, maybe even its purchase if you live in a videogame-crazed sausage house. But played on its own, Grim Adventures loses its luster pretty quickly. Unlockables, such as the numerous, seemingly interchangeable characters and the smaller stages, generally lack the novel quality that makes novelty, well, novel, while a thorough mastering of the game won’t take even reasonably advanced players more than ten or so hours. Head-to-head mode, once the game is completed, on the other hand, seems infinitely playable, so long as a bevy of like-minded friends are at your continual disposal. Think of this as a party game, not an epic, Zelda-like challenge.

In general, Grim Adventures is a pretty well-constructed game, especially considering the rather lacklustre quality of most children’s videogame tie-ins of recent memory. Some might even say it’s surprisingly enjoyable.