The Secret Saturdays: Beasts of the 5th Sun
Score: 60% ESRB: Everyone 10+ Publisher: D3 Developer: High Voltage Software Media: DVD/1 Players: 1 Genre: Action/ Platformer
Graphics & Sound: The Secret Saturdays: Beasts of the 5th Sun takes one of the currently rising kids' cartoons and puts it into the interactive media for the first time ever. As for how well the show's visual style translates onto the Wii, Beasts of the 5th Sun does an adequate job. While the videogame doesn't quite match the smoothness found on the Cartoon Network series, it uses the system's capabilities quite well in order to provide character models that while a bit blocky, are by no means tough to bear. Outside of the human characters (the Saturdays and some of the enemies), the other character models (mainly the cryptids) also stack up well compared to their TV series counterparts. The other side of the game's presentation, audio, gets the job done as well. While you won't find yourself humming any of the background tunes or thinking the game's dialogue is superb, it does a good job of conveying the game's story (where the dialogue is concerned) and action (in the case of the music), and never really gets annoying. In fact, I was quite pleased to notice that Zak Saturday's one-line retorts were fairly low-key, which is always better than having too few voice-clips and having the statements get too repetitive. As for the voicework itself, I'm told the actors from the series have reprised their roles for Beasts of the 5th Sun, but there is nothing in the manual to indicate this.
Gameplay: The Secret Saturdays: Beasts of the 5th Sun starts off with the Saturdays' secret lab being broken into by one of their many enemies and having their database of cryptids, called the Cryptipedia, stolen. It seems, for some reason, their arch nemesis, V.V. Argost, wants to find very specific cryptids (creatures believed to be myths, but are actually real) in order to fulfill an ancient prophecy. As Zak, you will move from level to level not only re-scanning any cryptid you find in order to help rebuild the Cryptipedia, but to also take control of them to perform a wide variety of different tasks. There are quite a few different ways to use cryptids. For one, Zak can take control over the family's personal beasts, Fiskerton and Komodo, in order to help get him through the levels. Fiskerton can climb on walls and when he is in position, can be used by Zak to leap onto platforms that are too high for him. Komodo, on the other hand, is mainly used to push large blocks around in order to open up new pathways for Zak. There are also wild cryptids that appear in the places where the game locks you into a specific screen in order to throw several waves of enemies at you. When you are faced with a cryptid instead of just a human enemy, you can use Zak's claw to scan them, then take control of them in order to fight your battles for you. Once you have fought and scanned one of these types of enemies, you can then switch to them in other such battle areas in that same level. There are also some you take over in order to solve puzzles. One of the ones I enjoyed the most was when you had to launch your controlled creature at an angle in order to throw it into an enemy cryptid. The last type of cryptids are ones that Zak doesn't take control of, but by scanning it, stuns them and allows him to move forward. In the tutorial level, this was done by a series of gremlin cryptids who were messing with the wiring of the lab and causing fire or other hazards to block Zak's path. Outside of the ability to control these strange creatures, Beasts of the 5th Sun is your basic run of the mill platformer. There is far more running, jumping and grapple-hooking (with the use of the Cryptid Claw, of course) than even straight-up fights in this game, so if you have any kind of problem with that style of gaming, I will tell you right now that it's best to just leave The Secret Saturdays on the shelf.
Difficulty: The Secret Saturdays: Beasts of the 5th Sun has the standard platformer difficulty disclaimer. There were tons of times when I found myself constantly being sent back to some lower part of the level (or falling into an endless pit) because of a badly-timed jump. With the parts of the game that don't involve swinging or jumping from place to place (typically in the battles mentioned in Gameplay), the game is pretty easy. Since Beasts of the 5th Sun is geared towards the show's followers (AKA younger players), this isn't a bad thing. They might have a few issues with some of the basic puzzles thrown into the mix (like when controlling Komodo), but even those obstacles shouldn't slow down progress all that much for the target audience.
Game Mechanics: The Secret Saturdays: Beasts of the 5th Sun's only real interesting feature comes in taking control of a cryptid. This is done by holding down the (C) button on your Nunchuck and then pointing the Wii-mote at the cryptid in question. Once you've locked onto the creature, you will then get to move them around at your leisure. The ability to take control of these creatures adds a level of puzzles to the game that it would not otherwise have. For instance, you can take control of a flying one in order to position it over a large gap so that Zak can grapple, jumping and using the (Z) button, and swing to a safe ledge. In the case of the creatures you will use for fighting, you simply control them as if you were still controlling Zak and attack any enemies that appear. While Beasts of the 5th Sun is a pretty solid platformer, the overall feel of the game won't cause it to stand out and even fans of the show probably won't get much more than a rental's worth of gameplay out of it, especially since it doesn't really have any replayability to it.
-J.R. Nip, GameVortex Communications AKA Chris Meyer
Related Links: The Secret Saturdays on Wikipedia.org
Band Hero WWE SmackDown vs. Raw 2010