Full Review

14 October 2005 - If you've seen The Nightmare Before Christmas then you'll know that Tim Burton's plasticine world is a very strange one indeed. So why should a video game be any different? It's not and all the weirdness of the movies is here in full gory glory.

The game is a follow-on from the 1993 award-winning animated movie of the same name, Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas and is a ghoulish tale set out in plasticine.

In this storyline players assume the role of "Jack Skellington", the Pumpkin King, and fight to help reclaim Halloweentown from the mischievous Oogie Boogie (the bad guy).

The gameplay follows the usual action adventure yarn that most have seen before. You come across evil henchmen and strike them down with your soul whip. Stealing their soul as you go. The more souls you have the more points you earn and those point eventually mean upgrades in the witch's shop.

The storyline is woefully linear and the monotony of fighting the bad guys rather dull after a time. This isn't helped by the games insistence on doing tasks in a specific order and this can mean that you find yourself running around a level for ages purely because you didn't go and see a certain character at the beginning.

Where the game does differ however is when it comes to fighting the end of level bad guy. Strangely, the end of level fight is based around a song and dance routine. Get to a certain amount of fighting combos and you get to do a little dance routine. The controls change and all of a sudden it's like you are in a dedicated dancing game.

A quick-fire round of hitting the correct button at the right time to the tune means the possibility of knocking a considerable chunk of energy off your opponent, fail with the rhythm and defeating the boss is possible, it's just going to take you considerably longer. It's a great element to the fights and one that camps up the brutally of the fighting no end.

VERDICT
Colourful characters and graphics bring Tim Burton's world to life as much here as they do on the movie screen. Fans of the film will revel in the ability to play Jack Skillington's alter egos - the Pumpkin King and Santa Jack across an array of different scenery.

The graphics and imagination is the game's saving grace here, it's just a shame that the actual bit in the middle - i.e., fighting the henchmen - is so monotonous.