Despicable Me
Rating: E-10+ - Everyone 10+

After playing as ninjas, young sons in search of their fathers, errant knights, cute and agile animals, it's a relief to play as Gru, a fat, baldheaded villain with a voice like Boris Badenov from The Bullwinkle Show. Actually Gru is not so evil. All he wants to do is steal the moon and deface artwork while he's at it. It's not like he is intent on causing flaming catastrophic Armageddon, so popular these days. If you want despicable - try Naughty Bear.

The gameplay is clever - To accomplish his nefarious scheme, Gru must steal eleven parts to build his rocket - making for the eleven levels in the game. To assist him, he has his minions - millionsandmillions of minions and they can be used for almost anything - lumped together to make a straight object - think ladder, bridge, stacked to make steps, arranged in a circle they can develop into yet other surprising devices. Arranging minions is only the beginning, shooting them with one of the ray guns, freeze, air, magnet, gives them different properties and finally, you can use them as projectiles.

This is basically a platformer - but a platformer that requires strategy to figure out how to best use the many possible combinations - and that is a big part of the fun. There're also flying levels with simple dogfights - last one in the air wins. The fully developed story and characters and well done graphics I attribute to the movie. The game allows players, adults and children to extend this movie experience.

Fun Factor: The various possibilities can be challenging
Female Factor: Nada
Player Friendly: Lots of intermediate saves. Manual is almost useless but good in game instructions.

Reviewed by: Editor - Aug/10