Ice Age

An average CG film gets a barely average Game Boy Advance rendition.

Craig Harris Avatar

Updated: Nov 24, 2018 1:33 am

Posted: Mar 19, 2002 8:00 am

Criticisms aside about the movie's bland story, the theatrical release of Ice Age certainly has taken off, becoming one of the highest grossing March movies ever. It still has a bit to go to meet other established CG animated movies like Toy Story and Shrek...but at least Ubi Soft had the forethought to cash in on Ice Age's potential success, as the company has jumped right in there with a Game Boy Advance game on the shelves as close to the release of the movie as humanly possible. Shame the game lacks all over the place, from the graphic quality to the simple-yet-annoying game design to the overall length of the challenge...you can, quite literally, beat this game in the time between the movie's opening and closing credits.

Features

Ten levels
Two playable characters
Hidden secret
Password save
Only for Game Boy Advance

Like the movie, the game's task challenge Manny the Mammoth and Sid the Sloth (I can't believe the writers get paid to come up with names like these) to get a lost human baby to its family, all safe and sound. Sorry, Diego, but you've been relegated to the role of "checkpoint" status during Sid's three levels. Apparently, acorns are super important to collect in the Ice Age, as they represent the game's health meter...each time you take a hit, you'll lose an acorn. Luckily, they're all over the place so you'll have to suck pretty bad at the game to actually die...but even if you do, the game has infinite lives, and places you back at the beginning of the part of the level you died in...so, really, this makes the game super easy to plow through.

Manny takes the lead in this game, scoring seven of the game's ten levels...he's a platform hero who can jump and bellystomp through extremely basic level designs that feature a sharing of Mario-style enemy bouncing as well as basic puzzle elements to make levels seem a bit longer than they are. In some levels, for example, Manny will have to bellystomp the ground to flip over harmful porcupines, which turn them into safe trampolines that can access the higher levels. He'll have to grab a giant walnut which can be used to rid sleeping rhinos or buzzing flies...sometimes having to retrace his steps to pick up another to get rid of other enemies down the line. Sid's levels are a little different, and much more annoying; his levels are forced scrolling challenges where you'll "die" if you touch the left side of the screen. He's been given the uncreative Tazmanian Devil/Crash Bandicoot's tornado attack to take out enemies on the way.

The developers make these ten simple levels challenging by creating blind leaps in places, making it impossible to see what's below a ledge without taking that annoying "leap of faith" where you could be killed because of a hidden chasm that's past the game's viewable scroll. Other irritating design issues include wonky collision detection; your character will take hits from items that are on ledges out of your jumping reach...and some enemy sprites are just high enough out of reach that'll cause your player to take a hit if his jump isn't just right.

And even though the movie itself uses 3D models, the game does not. For whatever reason, the developer decided that the game deserved poorly animated, low-color pixel-art for the character and enemy sprites. Apart from the detailed, multiscrolling backgrounds, the graphics in Ice Age are some of the worst ever used in a GBA game. Honestly, I've seen more detail on some Game Boy Color sprites...and some NES games put Ice Age's sprite quality to shame, too.

The game's only real plus is the charming-yet-repetitive soundtrack that puts the GBA's audio hardware (or lack thereof) to good use. And watching the credits scroll by after an hour of gameplay time shows that those damn good sound guys in Germany, Shin'en, were the team responsible. And I certainly wasn't surprised to find out that little tidbit...the music is definitely above the average fare.

Verdict

A bit more than an hour of straightforward play was all that was needed to get the ending sequence and credits. The manual states that something special happens when you clear each level with more than forty acorns each...but honestly, after breezing through this half-assed platformer I just didn't have it in me to retrace my footsteps to accomplish that extra task. But at least this extra increases the replay value...if you can stand the overall bland game design. There's nothing special here...and certainly no value since even the young kids can complete all ten levels in Ice Age before an ice cube melts. And that might be more fun to watch.