Bizarrely, there has been a spate of (READ: at least two) animated movies on circuit recently that have featured villains as the protagonists. The likes of Will Ferrell and Steve Carrel have been hauled in by Paramount Pictures and Universal Pictures respectively. I’ve already reviewed the Will Ferrell / Paramount Pictures attempt at a game tie-in, and it was ghastly - a truly unabashed and horrible cash-in on a movie’s release. Thankfully, Universal’s Steve Carrel game tie-in isn’t half bad so I don’t feel guilty taking up five minutes of your time with this write-up.

Meet Gru. He’s a professional villain. A kind of Dr. Evil comical villain, if you will. In Gru’s own mind, he’s actually a lot more than just an ordinary villain - he’s a Master Villain. In just one year Gru has managed to steal the Times Square Jumbotron, the Statue of Liberty (well, the small one, from Las Vegas) and the Eiffel Tower (also the replica from Las Vegas). He’s a lean mean superbad villainous machine. One day Gru’s pride is severely dented when a new, younger villain steps into the limelight after having stolen an Egyptian pyramid and in comparison all of the other villains now just look, well, lame. In order to remedy this unjust turn of events and regain his top spot as the most villainous villain ever, Gru plots to pull off the biggest heist of the century by … wait for it … (insert dramatic sinister music) … stealing the Moon!

And once we’ve stolen the moon, we’ll have a ball!

I really don’t want to give away the film’s ending by telling you where the game starts in relation to the movie, but what I shall say is that it does seem to loosely follow on from the events of the theatrical release. For Gru to achieve his supervillain conquest (we’re now talking about the game) he needs to assemble a contraption (I’m being deliberately vague here so I don’t give anything away about the movie’s ending; I wouldn’t want to be despicable and ruin it for you!) but he lacks the necessary funds to legitimately source the components. Instead, Gru decides to steal the parts he needs for his contraption.

Of course, as any respectable supervillain knows, if you need anything villainous, you will probably have to steal it from a rival villain. This in and of itself isn’t such a bad thing since anything you gain will be your rival’s loss, so all in all, it’s a cunning plan. The only problem is, as any respectable supervillain also knows, all villains have lairs. These lairs are usually secret, and are also usually impenetrable, so if you want to steal something from an impenetrable secret lair, you should probably prepare yourself for traps and puzzles and invisible sharks with freaking laser beams on their heads.

Fortunately for Gru, he isn’t entirely at his wits’ end - Gru has a small army of unconditionally loyal Minions and a certain Dr. Nefario - Gru’s elderly, hearing impaired scientist, collaborator and good friend that designs masterful gadgets to help Gru overcome the traps and puzzles.

The game features the voice talents of Steve Carell and the continuity in voice-acting of the main character does offer some good moments of humour. I have to give Steve Carell some credit here; he does a good job with his limited lines in the game and the developers did an equally good job of interspersing his one-liners in a manner that keeps the commentary fresh throughout the title.

Another good thing is that despite this being a game aimed at younger audiences the humour isn’t childish. At the beginning of the game, for example, Gru is given an air gun (not to be confused with a BB gun; this air gun blows jets of air). When Gru asks Dr. Nefario why he has made an air gun for him, Dr. Nefario’s reply is simply: “You told me to make you a gun that could blow anything away.” With the later instalments of weaponry (the freeze ray makes its return from the movie, along with a magnet gun and a web gun) come equally amusing dialogues.

This magnet gun is really attractive!

Gameplay-wise, players control Gru in a side-scrolling puzzle platformer. There are eleven levels to the game and each is divided into several stages. In some stages you’ll be evading and manoeuvring past obstacles, which requires more reaction speed and motor skills. If you find any of the villainous trap stages too difficult you can employ a Despicable Cheat to skip that stage. I can understand anyone’s temptation to do so because some of the obstacle stages are downright frustrating and they’ll require quite a few restarts to overcome, but none of them are impossible and some perseverance will eventually see you through. Every stage also has an autosave facility so if you fail you jump straight to the beginning of the challenge. As you progress deeper into the game you will find the obstacles become more taxing and you will also use your gadget weapons more often to help you along the way.

Generously interspersed between the obstacle platforming stages are puzzle stages and this is probably where the older players will have most of their fun. The puzzle stages play out in a similar fashion to classics like Lemmings, sans the frantic urgency. Gru has a set number of Minions to assist him at each puzzle stage and it’s up to you to decide where, how, and when to employ the Minions. Minions can be deployed in three basic formations: individually, as columns, or as circles. The latter two require a specific number of Minions in order to be available - if some Minions are already deployed then you may no longer be able to use a column or circle without first releasing some of the original Minions you’ve deployed.

Where things get a little more interesting is how these Minion deployments interact with the weapons Gru is carrying. A freeze ray on a single Minion will encase the poor soul in a cube of ice, adding weight to the Minion in order to hold something down, or giving the Minion buoyancy to allow Gru to float them as stepping stones to cross a water way. Likewise, the air gun on a single Minion will soar the loyal sidekick upwards where they can hold a ceiling button pressed in. If you use the air gun on a frozen Minion then you have a moving frozen Minion! If you count that there are three different Minion formations and four different weapons, that’s three times four … meaning … um … twelve unique ways Gru can employ his Minions to overcome puzzles.

Well, twelve isn’t entirely true - as I alluded to earlier you can mix the weapon effects on your Minions, but it’s still around twelve. This variety lends some degree of challenge to the levels but you will only encounter complex puzzles near the end of the game. If you ever find yourself stuck in a puzzle, there are hint tokens scattered throughout the levels so during your platforming meanderings you should have picked up a couple to help you through those tough spots. There’s sufficient diversity in the puzzles to keep you interested and not once did I have that ‘oh no, not again’ feeling that is often rife when playing kids’ games.

Besides the side-scrolling platforming and puzzle stages, occasionally Gru will have to escort his Minions in their airship to or from the lair. These stages are pretty ordinary shoot ‘em ups but it will help break the monotony of the side-scrolling platforming for kids. The shoot ‘em up stages also form the foundation for the multiplayer, which offers two players four competitive head-to-head modes as Gru and Vector. I didn’t expect much from the multiplayer but it actually turned out to be quite a nice deviation from the story mode and this will definitely add value for the younger audience.

This game is truly not como un burro!

I actually enjoyed the PS2 version of Despicable Me despite the obvious shortcomings of going back five years in technology. The puzzles are reasonably challenging, without being impossible, and there’s sufficient variety in gameplay to keep things fresh, while Steve Carrel’s voice-acting brings his classic humour back for the game. Be forewarned - if you’re expecting Minion antics like in the movie you won’t get anything like it - during the puzzle segments the Minions are just static critters with very little in the way of animations and there’s virtually zero interaction with them besides employing them as bridges or stepping stones. More could have been done to involve the Minions and it feels a bit of a missed opportunity.

Nonetheless, as far as kids games go, Despicable Me is not bad. There’s a lot going for the game and I am certain the kids aged seven to eleven will enjoy the challenge of solving the puzzles.

The Good:

- Humour from the movie is carried to the game dialogue
- Puzzles are varied and entertaining
- Multiplayer is a good distraction

The Bad:

- Minions are under-utilised
- It’s still a kid’s game

Purchase: