I have to admit, I like the Shrek movies. They’re funny, visually dense, and very entertaining for adults as well as kids. The game adaptation for Shrek 2 falls short of the films’ high standards, but it’s a decent adventure game with a few clever ideas.

The basic formula is familiar enough. Shrek 2 is a 3D platformer with a heavy focus on collecting items and playing mini-games. The game’s most distinguishing feature is its four-character ensemble gameplay. For the vast majority of the game, you are controlling four characters at once, with direct control over one of them and the rest following along. You can switch among the current party members at any time, and many of the game’s simple puzzles involve using the correct character or a combination of two or three of them. The characters in your party are different for every level, which is a nice touch, because it means new characters (and thus new gameplay elements, however minor) can be introduced late in the game. The starting characters are Shrek, Fiona (in her ogre form), Donkey, and “Gingy” the Gingerbread Man. Eventually you’ll get to use Lil’ Red, Puss in Boots, Big Bad Wolf, and a few others. Each character has slightly different basic attack and jump attributes, plus one unique special move.

There are about a dozen “chapters”, or levels, some based directly on events of the movie and others extrapolated from events or locations only briefly mentioned in the film. Although the game supposedly arranges each chapter by sub-missions, the truth is that most levels can be beaten by simply getting to the end. Two chapters are set up like hubs, with several tasks set up in the vicinity to be completed before you can move on. One chapter is made up entirely of a rhythm-based mini-game, portrayed as a group battle against Puss in Boots. Nearly every chapter ends with “Hero Time” a mini-game scenario which singles out one character for a solo performance. Some chapters suffer from the old “what am I supposed to do” syndrome, but none of them are terribly large, and you’ll eventually figure things out if only by luck. The game’s puzzles are extremely simple, like using Shrek to move a block near a platform so you can climb up to the top. There are some tasks later in the game that require more thinking and/or dexterity, but everything stays in the realm of what a child could figure out on his own.

What kids won’t be able to figure out is why their computer-controlled friends get stuck behind walls. The AI pathing is easily confused by winding paths and sharp corners, and the game is very inconsistent about when characters stay put and when they will make a beeline for the rest of the party (often straight through deadly hazards). AI characters work under the most basic behavioral patterns; they won’t even defend themselves from enemies unless you are also attacking.

These problems are immediately solved if all four characters are being controlled by human players. The game’s multiplayer feature is contained entirely within the main adventure, and you can add or remove players at any time from the pause menu. The game isn’t necessarily more fun in multiplayer (my friends kept making fun of the game or were perplexed by the dodgy controls), but multi-character puzzles are easier to coordinate, and there are simply fewer problems with the AI. Four-player cooperative gameplay is certainly an interesting idea and an unusual feature for any game, so if you have a regular play group and have gotten sick of Crystal Chronicles, Shrek 2 may provide a few hours of entertainment.

Unfortunately, the retail version of Shrek 2 suffers from numerous bugs and glitches. Some are as innocuous as cut-scenes ending in mid-sentence (transitions in and out of cut-scenes are choppy in general). Others involve the camera getting stuck behind objects, which often leads to you or one of the AI characters falling off a ledge and having to restart at a checkpoint. The worst bugs are those that cause the game to freeze up or separate characters in such a way that they can’t reunite or kill themselves. I encountered two such bugs in my single run through the game, and my fellow reviewer Jeff Shirley ran into several more. In each case, I had to pause the game and restart the level, even though the levels are packed with checkpoints.

The game does a nice job of portraying its source material with page-turning chapter introductions and frequent cut-scenes. The dialog is not as well written as that in the movie, but it features the same kind of humor and can be occasionally funny. Voice acting is done entirely by imitators who sound remarkably close to the originals, and other than a few combat cries, the voice clips don’t repeat very often. The visuals obviously can’t hold a candle to the film’s beautiful rendering, but most of the main characters are nicely modeled, and the environments are detailed and recognizable. The frame rate holds up well too, which is impressive given that there are almost always four main characters on screen.

Shrek 2 offers little to hardcore gamers; the gameplay is average at best for 3D platformers, and there’s little challenge in the repetitive, button-smashing combat. It’s a shame that the game doesn’t cater to older players as well as the movies appeal to adults, but as a movie-licensed kid game, you could do a lot worse.