Jul 10, 2013

[Games] Despicable Me: Minion Rush (Android)

I'd be lying if I stated that my decision to finally get an HTC One was for purely logical, productivity-related reasons. One of my frustrations with my past phone and my under powered ASUS TF101 was the fact that it could not handle many of the more recent games. And it's not like I spend that much time playing games given everything else that I'm involved in. But for the games that I do want to dabble with, I'd to get a decent shot.

Enter Despicable Me: Minion Rush, which is an obvious attempt to capitalize on the success of the Despicable Me 2 sequel currently in theaters. Let's face it - as much as the kids in that movie were cute enough and Gru certainly has his share of funny moments, at the end of the day most of us watched (or will watch) the movie because of those darn little Minions. They are strangely adorable with their gibberish language and slapstick antics. And hey, they really carried both movies for the most part.

This game features our favorite little Minions front and center, as should be the case. The rest of the characters make limited appearances, but let's not mind them too much.


Despicable Me: Minion Rush follows the infinite running gameplay so popularized by games like Temple Run. And I suppose it makes some sense to adapt this particular play style given we've already seen versions of the game flavored like Oz and Brave. But this game does feature a number of differences from the Temple Run experience on its own, which does keep things interesting. The game is free for Android and iOS.

In the game, you play one of the many little Minions working in support of the super-villain Gru. The game appears to be set during the events of the first Despicable Me movie and not the current sequel. Your goal as a Minion is to become the Minion of the Month (or all time, whatever) and to do this you need to earn more points than your despicable brethren. It's never explained why this is being decided in some odd little race, but it's not like that we get into these types of games because of a rich story or plot.

Similar to Temple Run, you (as a Minion) run as long as you can while you collect bananas and avoid different obstacles. Instead of the need to tilt your device left and right to change your "lane", you swipe left and right to execute such moves. You still have all the other movements like swiping up to jump and swiping down to roll.

The game does have some fun bits that set it somewhat apart.

As you run there's a points multiplier in effect - this increases as you level up your Minion at the start of each round and later it helps you get more of a leg up. During each run, you can knock out other Minions around the track, which help fill up your meter in the upper left corner which slowly increases your multiplier rank. The higher the rank, then the more points that you earn.

In addition the game has very interesting power-ups that are generally consistent with the Despicable Me franchise. So yes, you can get your hands on a freeze ray that freezes obstacles that you can break for more points. And you can ride one of Gru's rockets (albeit backwards) to zoom ahead a significant amount.

The game naturally has some social aspects - in this case you get to compete with your friends in terms of your overall scores which are displayed as a ranking roster. Also, when you have your Facebook account linked to your app, then additional Minions appear during the stage holding up signs that match the userpics of your friends and thus you can still get additional points by knocking them out.

Things that I love most - there are alternate track sections that involve changing the view from over the shoulder to more of a sideways view. And there are even boss fights with opponents like Vector, from the first movie.

The game is far from perfect, however. Little quirks like difficulties with connecting to Facebook sometimes (in Android) or the number of steps needed to start another run at the end of each round. Seriously, the game would be a lot more addictive if there were a more immediate way to run again.

Still, the game is nicely adorable and it's a decent amount of fun. It's more than just a basic reskinning of another game to fit a franchise - there was some amount of thought put into making this Minion Rush a bit more interesting. So I'm happy to rate this as 4 unlockable Minion costumes with their respective powers out of a possible 5.


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1 comment:

  1. Nice review to whoever who wrote this.

    Just to add few things; Minion Rush features secret ares as well as unlockable codes and achievements which can be converted to tokens. Check the list here: http://www.cheatmasters.com/blog/2013/08/02/despicable-me-minion-rush-unlock-codes-and-achievements-guide/

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