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DS, 2007; $30.00
What is it?

Napoleon Dynamite is a minigame collection for the Nintendo DS featuring the characters from the successful 2004 independent film of the same name. The game is developed by 7 Studios (who do a lot of licensed games) and published by Crave Entertainment. You can see the official site right here. A version of the game is also available for the PSP, but this review only covers the DS version. The idea is that the story loosely follows Napoleon through a mild adventure, during which he tells his characteristic tall tales of adventure and excitement, which then become minigames. The games themselves are all done in the same artistic style, which is that of a combination of doodles, cut paper, and photographs of the movie characters’ heads. I would have to describe it as somewhere between the opening sequence to the TV sitcom Home Improvement and an episode of South Park.

Interestingly, I have the unusual experience of playing this game without having seen the film. I read a synopsis of the film online to help me better understand the concepts in the game without gaining an attachment to the IP.

How does it play?

The minigames in this collection are moderately varied, but not particularly numerous. There are only perhaps a couple dozen to play through, and many of these are actually just remixed versions of the same game. Some of the games are really interesting and fun, and these tend to be the most challenging ones.

On the subject of challenge, I found the balance in the game problematic. Some of the games were remarkably easy, while others stood out as being very complex and difficult. However, even the games that were difficult often had a balance-breaking issue in them, such as a move or action you could take to ensure a quick victory. The best example is a martial-arts segment near the end of the game. Napoleon lies to people throughout the game about his fighting and dancing skills, so many of the games are fighting and dancing. While fighting waves of challenging enemies, I found myself being beaten quite a bit until I realized I could simply uppercut constantly and take almost no hits. In a later stage of the same game, this tactic fell apart. Then I found that a jumping punch not only made me invulnerable, but it mowed down waves of enemies in only a couple of hits and scored ridiculous combos. Surprisingly, that ended up being one of the most enjoyable minigames, but it was very disappointing that it was so easy to exploit the code this way.

Several of the minigames are a variation on the scrolling shooter, which of course was great for me. Naturally, they didn’t have the challenge level you’d expect from that improbably punishing genre, but they were fun nonetheless. The seeming randomness of enemies and obstacles made it confusing at times, particularly when one game made a cow something you wanted to crash into and the next made it an obstacle, using the same graphic.

The dancing minigames are the most fun in the game. The music is unremarkable and there are only a few tunes in the game, but mastering the buttons combinations is a pleasure. It was unfortunate that these didn’t use the touch screen rather than button presses, because as we’ve seen with great music games like Ouendan! and Elite Beat Agents, the touch screen is ideal for this application.

This is a periodic issue with the game, though. Some of the control decisions are perplexing. The touch screen is not used, or is overused, in most of the games. When so many games have made such good use of the screen for identical mechanics as were used here, it’s hard to figure out why this was done.

There are cutscenes that function as bookends on each minigame, most of which seem to have quotes from the movie. These will consist of a still image of the character’s face and a block of text. While the bits of dialog were lost on me, I did notice that the text was formatted incorrectly, often leaving orphaned words on a following page. The result was a sentence that made no sense, until I pressed the button and found the last word. Breaking the sentences between phrases, rather than in the middle of them, would have fixed this.

A final complaint I have is in the game’s menus. They are confusing despite appearing straightforward. Loading a game is accomplished by choosing “Start Game” and then “Continue”. If you use “Load Game” you will find yourself caught in a loop of confirming the game’s loading and then being dropped back at the main menu. Additionally, I spotted a typo on the legal notice at the beginning of the game.

How does it look and sound?

The handmade art style, as seen on the movie’s and game’s promotional material, is pretty unique. It really went a long way to tying everything together in the game. Consistency is critical in video games, and this is no less true in minigame collections. I enjoy the Warioware series of games, but I’m sometimes bothered by the great variety of production values in the different games. These are well balanced throughout. It’s hard to say whether the simplistic art style helped the developers or made it even harder than it would have been, but the result is very appropriate for the subject matter.

The music in the game, as I mentioned under gameplay, is very limited. I don’t know if the songs are from the movie or original to the game, but they’re really more of a background thing here that doesn’t really connect with the gameplay at all. I found it challenging to understand from the audio what the music minigames wanted from me in terms of timing until I became so familiar with the game’s music that I could pick it out.

There are some mildly annoying voice samples in the game (Sweet!, Idiot!) that clearly are from the film, and these are short and not varied.

How is the replay value?

Completing the game only took me a couple of hours of play, and then a hard mode is unlocked. The added challenge of this mode could add a lot to this game, as I found most of the games far too easy.

Is it worth it?

The $30 retail price of this game is out of scale with the content. At a budget price of $20, you could do a lot worse than this game. Naturally, the game is going to save most of its appeal for die-hard fans of the film, but I would think that these people might not find the gameplay clicking with them the way the style or the generous helping of movie references do. I can’t imagine wanting to throw casserole at the llama again myself, but I might try the dancing more if I could do it with a wider variety of music. Perhaps Napoleon Dynamite could have excelled as a rhythm game.

While you could add a full point if you’re drunk with love for the film, Napoleon Dynamite for Nintendo DS gets two point five out of five for the rest of us.