The mastermind behind Shrek, John H. William, is at it again with Space Chimps, the next big CGI film from Vanguard Animation. Like most summer blockbusters (Iron Man, Wall-E, Prince Caspian, Hulk etc…), the mandatory movie tie-in game is already in development.
If you haven’t heard of Space Chimps before now, allow me to bring you up to speed. A young circus chimp named Ham III (voiced by Andy Samburg of Saturday Night Live) is drafted by NASA to head an all chimp mission to an unexplored planet as a publicity stunt since Ham is the grandson of the first chimp sent into space. Their ship crashes and Ham must fight to save his crewmates, Luna (voiced by Cheryl Hines) and Titan (voiced by Patrick Warburton, whose voice seems to be in about everything these days) as well as free the other creatures on that planet from the evil King Zartog (voiced by Jeff Daniels).
The game is being developed by Brash Entertainment and players will control Ham and Luna as they solve puzzles, jump, fight and swing through 11 levels following and expounding on the movie. Matt got some hands-on time with the game at NYCC this year and while he’d love to report that a game based entirely on monkeys in space was both fun and funny, it fell pretty short. The game featured some pretty sticky controls that made it hard to maneuver the monkeys around and jumping movements were a bit unpredictable and made what should of been some child-friendly platforming pretty aggravating. Graphics looked decent at best and, while playing with two different characters could have been fun, from what he played it looked like you’d only be having fun with the boy monkey as the girl monkey was pretty much a bore. In short, this looks like another rushed movie tie-in game targeted at kids who will see a monkey on a box and want it.
But, if you like monkeys on boxes then know that Space Chimps will be released alongside the film this August for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 2, Nintendo Wii and DS.
