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Furry Legends Review for Nintendo Wii

Furry Legends Review for Nintendo Wii

Furry things can often be cute and full of joy, and a platforming romp based on rolling balls of silliness sounds like good fun. Developer Gamelion might have had gamers’ best interests in mind, but this is one adventure that is far from legendary.

Furry Legends screenshot

Furry Legends takes place in Furland, and you’ll take control of a handful of Furballs as they struggle against the evil forces of Squaries. It’s an absolutely absurd set-up, one that isn’t helped at all by the game’s uninspired, tasteless puns. Though the game makers try to come off as paying homage to a handful of great WiiWare titles, such as NyxQuest and LostWinds, the game only succeeds at being a mess.

Like NyxQuest and LostWinds, Furry Legends is a 2.5D puzzle platformer that relies on both physics and ingenuity, but the gameplay mechanics simply don’t hold up in the areas where it counts the most. The controls are unnecessarily complicated, and the momentum of the Furballs, matched with the skimpy nature of most platforms, makes for many frustrating gameplay moments.

The game uses both the Wii Remote and Nunchuk, with movement of your Furballs mapped to the analog stick. The creatures themselves move and control fine; they just don’t gel well with the environments and objects within the game. You can jump with the A button, and each Furball has a special ability that’s executed by either tapping or holding the B button.

The combat, however, is counterintuitive, and after just a short bit of play, most folks will likely avoid it like the plague. In order to attack enemies, you’ll have to hold the Z button, aim in the direction of your target with the analog stick, and then waggle the Wii Remote. It sounds simple enough, but with Squaries flying around like jumping beans, along with the fact your Furball doesn’t move while the Z button is depressed, it’s all too easy to end up a cloud of dead fluff.

Furry Legends screenshot

The game is rife with such frustrations. Rather than offering a fun challenge, Furry Legends is difficult for all the wrong reasons. Collision detection is a recurring issue, and swinging platforms, that are barely wider than the Furballs themselves, create many opportunities for them to fall to their death. Additionally, momentum that constantly works against the flow of gameplay causes the Furballs to continue to roll when attempting to remain stationary on platforms.

One of the main selling points of the game, the physics, is yet another reliable source of contention. Don’t expect realistic ragdoll animations that aid you in your adventure. The movement of objects and enemies zigs and zags recklessly around the screen, occasionally getting stuck in the environment. Also, moving objects you’re meant to avoid are usually an awful counterpoint to the way your Furballs move and jump. In plain English, the developers have made it near impossible to pass through certain obstacles without taking damage or dying. There’s a lot of luck involved in successfully navigating the world of Furry Legends, but above all else, there’s ample time spent suffering through many agonizing mishaps.

Furry Legends screenshot

The game is laid out as a storybook, with the player telling the rest of the tale as you play through the adventure. Each chapter represents a level, and once you’ve completed a chapter, you can make repeat visits to collect crystals (which earn you extra lives) or other goodies using powers acquired later in the game. It’s not an innovative concept by any means, but it’s still a fine presentation, especially for an abbreviated WiiWare offering.

Furry Legends screenshot

Similar to LittleBigPlanet, there are checkpoints along the way where your Furballs will re-spawn should you die, which will happen often. Of course, once you lose all of your lives, it’s back to the beginning of the level. I’m not one for having a game hold my hand, but again, Furry Legends’ challenges are mostly born from a need to conform to poor level design, floaty mechanics, and various bugs and glitches. Redoing the same masochistic segments in hopes the journey will eventually begin to shine isn’t the most entertaining way to spend a few hours. When the jaunt finally wraps up and you’re still left with a barely functional platformer, you’re likely going to feel cheated.

Unfortunately, the game’s production values do precious little to ease the blow of mind-numbingly painful gameplay. The background textures are low-poly and lack detail, and the screen will often jitter spastically when your critters move to a certain area of the environment. The designers do a decent job of leading players along with intelligent camera cues, though the overall world of Furland is generic.

The music also suffers from being completely unremarkable, and the sound effects offer little in the way of enhancing gameplay. Surprisingly, there’s text dialogue aplenty, and we can all be thankful the developers give players the options to skip past all of it. The writing is second-rate at best, with double entendres that will likely go over the heads of younger gamers whilst eliciting shameful eye rolls from mature audiences.

Furry Legends hobbles its way onto WiiWare as a dysfunctional annoyance that left me begging for relief. To be perfectly honest, there are some chestnuts to be found, but they lay buried beneath a mass of platforming desecration. The movement and forward momentum of the Furballs doesn’t match up well with the level design. ; Add a physics system that wreaks the wrong kinds of havoc to this equation, and you’ve got a game that ends up being all about frustration rather than fun. The developers obviously know what they like, and with this game, they seem eager to share that with the world. Unfortunately, the expertise and creativity that accompany many of Furry Legends’ inspirations are sorely lacking here.

RATING OUT OF 5 RATING DESCRIPTION 3.0 Graphics
The visuals get the job done, but there’s nothing original or particularly pretty about the game. Jittery animations are in abundance. 2.0 Control
This is a game in which subtle changes could have made a world of difference. As it stands, Furry Legends is an adventure riddled with problems. 3.0 Music / Sound FX / Voice Acting
Serviceable themes and sound effects, nothing more. 2.0

Play Value
For a $10 WiiWare title, the amount of content is respectable. In terms of fun factor, however, this one’s hard to recommend.

2.0 Overall Rating – Poor
Not an average. See Rating legend above for a final score breakdown.

Game Features:

  • The legend starts here; play Furry Legends, the dynamic platform-adventure with the most fur ever seen in games so far!
  • Start the crazy adventure and solve the fun, physics-based puzzles taking place in Furland, a fantastic 3D world.
  • The player controls fluffy characters who each have different special skills, such as the ability to manipulate time, which can influence the physics-driven environment.

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