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I’ve watched and enjoyed the movies and I’ve played Super Smash Brothers Melee until I thought my Gamecube controller would explode. This being said, I was quite excited about reviewing Shrek Superslam for our audience. Shrek Superslam brings the loveable characters from the Shrek Universe to life in order to beat each other senseless in highly interactive environments immersed within humourous situations. The game as all the makings of a wonderfully fun multiplayer 3D combat game, unfortunately there are a few hitches along the way which greatly detract from the enjoyment factor.

The graphics in Shrek Superslam are magnificent. The character representations are beautifully crafted with wonderful animations. The interactive environments are both visually stunning and enjoyable during gameplay. The only serious detractor is the drop in framerate which happens when multiple players engage in melee combat as the game was intended. This drop in framerate does cause issues with gameplay where a quarter of a second could mean the difference between voctory and defeat.

Despite Shrek Superslam not enlisting the voice talent from the movie, the impersonators are excellent. The dialogue was along the same lines of the movies and me laughing out loud several times. Background music was appropriate for the genre and did not detract from the gameplay at all.

The game mechanics took quite a bit to get used to in Shrek Superslam. Instead of beating an opponent until he’s so weak an attack takes him out or “slams” him, you must bring up a slam meter for your character then perform your slam maneuver successfully in order to attain slams. In addition, there is little that a character can do in defense of the slam attacks of others besides being on the opposite side of the area or possibly on a different height level. This leads to picking on a weak character until your meter fills then performing your slam in such a way as to hit all your opponents at the same time. When adding this issue to the sluggish motions of the characters not allowing the precise maneuvers accomplished in such games as Super Smash Brothers Melee, there tends to be a frustration factor that caused many combats to be over long before the time limit was reached.

Overall Shrek Superslam is an acceptable game which could have been made an exceptional game with very few modifications. I would recommend this game to youngsters just getting into fast action games and fans of the Shrek movies. I would have liked a more reasonable slam system and the ability to perform precise combat maneuvers, but I still enjoyed Shrek Superslam enough to play for more than a dozen hours in multiplayer.