Rod Abernethy & Jason Graves - Flushed Away (2006)
Composer: Rod Abernethy & Jason Graves
Console: PS2, GameCube
Game Release Date: 2006-10-24
Bootleg Release Date: n/a
Ripper: n/a
Runtime: n/a
I am a sucker for licensed movie games. I have an extremely high tolerance for movie games. I've even played plenty of movie games wherein I never even saw the movie. Maybe it's something about the freedom gamedevs get to explore when givin a license I like. Maybe it's just their similarities with each other, charm or that they not always follow the plot of the movie I like. It's hard to put into words. I have been on a somewhat streak recently with movie games. The best one I played recently was Treasure Planet for the PS2. Even made a post about it. At the time of writing this the last one I completed was Flushed Away for the PS2. I might have seen Flushed Away. If I did I have barely a recollection of it. I played the demo on some PS2 demo disc back in the day.
Despite having a YouTube account for more than 10 years I have had recomendations turned off. Only relatively recently (within the last year and a half, since covid started?) I finally turned them on. At some point YouTube began sending me Flushed Away clips I thought ehn, there's a PS2 game. Why don't I give it a shot? So here we are. I also added it to my "Lodestar List", a list of 18 games I intend to at least try this year. (so far I have completely failed in trying to stick to it).
I started the run in late December but beat it on the 31st of January.
This game is a 3D platformer with a hub world and levels. You play as either Roddy or Rita depending on the level as well as levels where you control the Jammy Dodger (Roddy on turret or Rita driving). The game roughly follows the plot of the movie with Roddy's house as the tutorial area. There are some key differences however.
One thing I really like about movie games is that they won't always follow the movie plot and sometimes do their own thing. (spoilers) Flushed Away did just that. The biggest differences is that the Ruby is obtained early and never lost again, Roddy never gets an apartment and instead sticks with Rita for the duration of the game after meeting her. Arguably the most important detail is that the Jammy Dodger is never destroyed. Sid also never appears except for a cutscene at the start of the game. They end up taking the Jammy Dodger I to Europe on a grande trip in the end. So arguably a better ending than the actual movie.
The hub world is huge with there being two quest givers that show up. They are the rare item salesman and a rat pretending to be Chinese. I did a few side quests for them and then progressed the story a bit. I ended up not aligning the side-quests up with the story because at some point I triggered the endgame sequence and beat the game.
This leads me to my one and only problem with the game. It's too short! I get that movie games have a limit on how much they can add in but they could have just ignored the plot more and added more crap or a reminder that you can't go back from the endgame mission. Hell, even just add more sidequests around the massive empty town.
Other than that it was a solid game. I don't have much badd to say about it. Well, there was one puzzle where you had to knock boxes around to make a path to the other side (which logically is completely irelevant because the Jammy Dodger could justs scale everything). That said, there's no way this would win GOTY for me. It's a good game period. There's nothing here that left me super excited.
I liked playing as Rita the most. She had the most mobility, can grapple onto stuff and her segment was started with a stealth section. One where you could just alert all the guards and have no consequences (just outrun them).
The game was never too hard. Enemies were dooable, bosses were manageable and some of the level designs were neat. The whole level based around a knight in armor was cool, the way it spiralled around the medieval armor. I especially liked the towns, main town, Little Soho and Little China. It's a shame there wasn't more to do there. There was never any need for more money as most of the stuff to buy for the Jammy Dodger you could just find in levels. The turret section was cool but it sucked that there was only 1 time when you actually used it (may have appeared more in the side quests but idk). The castle siege event was also really cool but that only appears once in the endgame sequence. I ended up cheesing it using the guided crayons to just perform surgical strikes on the enemy. I would love to play that multiplayer and the next time my friends and I have a meetup we will.
I joked around with my brother that the balls that allow you to get extra jump and glide inspired a similar gimmick in Celeste. I also liked the method projectile enemies used to hit you. A lot of games, especially movie games will have projectile enemies target where you are at then throw. This makes dodging easy. For this game enemies will predict where you are going and aim there. This makes this slightly more challenging. Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion is the only game off the top of my head that also uses this logic.
All in all this is a decent 3D platformer that is just a bit short. If I ever do another run of it I will max out all the side-quests as early as possible to extend length. As for best recent movie game I have played I would still say Treasure Planet is the best. I still have a few more movie games lined up to try so we'll see if they can beat it. The next one planned by Atlantis: The Lost Empire for the PSX but I have long sinced cancelled that run. I think whenever I get a chance the next movie game will by the MegaMind PS3 game.
A random thought I had is 'why don't studios just allow the gamedevs to use the movie's actual soundtrack'? Well for one it may not work thematically. I don't mind origianlly composing music for the game though, it allows for a composer to down their own take on the movie.
That aside, the music for the game was composed by Rod Abernethy and Jason Graves. Unfortunately because of the time I beat the game (late January) and now (late July) I have completely forgotten all the music from this. Looking back on it, it's a combination of cinematic classical and cartoony music. Unfortunately, I was having trouble ripping the soundtrack (exctracting a PAK file) and can't find it available. It's on YouTube but I really don't want to rip it from YouTube, then manually extend the tracks. I'd rather extend higher quality versions. (also not gonna post the actual movie soundtrack since it will get copyright-striked INSTANTLY).
So unfortunately, unless I figure out how to extract the PAK file and get the real music files I don't have a post. I already wrote the post so w/e. I'll update this if I ever get to ripping the soundtrack.
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