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Set in the fantasy land of Far Far Away, Shrek the Third follows the storyline of the movie in which the Princess Fiona's father (the King) dies and leaves the kingdom to Shrek. Shrek, being an anti-social ogre, decides this is unacceptable and must find a replacement. Fiona happens to have a cousin Arthur (King Arthur of Legend) who would make a perfect replacement for king. All the while Prince Charming stages a coup to take over the kingdom. Helping Shrek and Fiona save the kingdom from Prince Charming are Donkey, Puss 'n Boots, and even Donkey's Wife the Dragon.

The Gameplay for Shrek the Third is simple. Run around bashing bad-guys, bashing barrels, bashing boxes... actually, the best thing to do is bash everything you can reach. If it moves, hit it. If you think it moved, hit it. If you know it didn't move, hit it. Eight all-too short levels of crate-bashing frenzy. Cannonballs and uprooted trees are just two of the choices you have for bashing your enemies. Enemies and breakable objects will occasionally drop items such as pieces of the Gingerbread Man, coins, pixies, mugs, and even Shrek Heads! If you collect all three Gingerbread Man pieces in a level it increases your life bar like the old Heart Pieces from the original Legend of Zelda. You spend coins to purchase new outfits for the characters in the “Shop” option in the start screen. Overall there was little difficulty in the normal game. The puzzles were over-simplified pattern recognition and even on the hardest difficulty the enemy AI was mediocre. Enemies with projectile weapons attempted to stay away from you, but were easily backed into a corner. Sword or fist-wielding enemies charged to close ranks without regard for other enemies in the vicinity. This is one way in which I feel the game lacks the depth of age range which the movies provide.

Several minigames and a multiplayer mode flesh out the gameplay adequately for the younger crowd for which the game was intended. Not quite a minigame, but definitely a break from the tedium of bashing boxes and heads; for one all-too short portion of the game, you play as the pink and purple dragon in a side-scrolling shooter reminiscent of Gradius, complete with two satellites... I mean her half donkey, half dragon children. Ships Ahoy forces you to use a cannon to destroy pirate ships before they reach your treasure, much like old style Space Invaders. Frog Herder has you chasing all your frogs into ponds before a timer runs out, like Sheepdog for the Commodore. Shooting Gallery has you tossing tomatoes at moving targets, watch out or you might hit an old lady... Oh wait, that's Hogan's Alley for the Nintendo! Catacombs Leap has you crossing a gorge by leaping onto different platforms to get to the other side, but make sure you don't get hit by a car Frogger! In Shrekleboard we have an honest copy of shuffleboard where you try to get your puck to land as close to the center of the scoring circles as possible. Last, but not least, we have the multiplayer mode in which you and your friends attempt to destroy each others' castles with catapults.

The graphics in Shrek the Third are vaguely comparable to the movie. While not pushing the performance of the Xbox 360 by any means, the models and landscapes were good enough for children to not notice the difference in the visuals from the movie to the game. On thing children will not overlook is the difficulty in the camera angle. More than once I found myself quite annoyed by the lack of camera control. A definite downside to the game is the failure to enlist the voice actors from the movie to voice their characters in the game. While the voice actors did do a wonderful job duplicating the character voices, there were enough moments of discongruity to cause moments of longing for Eddie Murphy's baying laughter or Mike Meyer's gruff annoyance. The sound effects, background noise, and background music were all adequate but not extraordinary.

Overall, for the target audience, Shrek the Third is an excellent game. A little short on story, but large on heart... and fun... and bashing... and minigames. The game is easy to get used to and simple enough for those around the age of eight. While I would definitely recommend this game to children between six and fourteen, I would not recommend this game for anyone looking for more than an hour's diversion from more interesting or story-absorbed games. More mature audiences could spark nostalgic or become upset by the obvious classic arcade clones. It might just be enough to bridge the generation gap.