Finding Nemo [GC]

GameCube owners who tought the days of sloppy ports were over get a reminder that a newer console doesn't always guarantee a better version of a multiplatform title. Released at the same time as the PlayStation 2 incarnation, GameCube's Finding Nemo ironically fails where the platform has traditionally been strong: in the framerate and load time departments. It's a darn shame, too, because Traveller's Tales actually crafted a fun little underwater adventure -- a sort of Ecco the Dolphin meets Crash Bandicoot. Sure, with heavy-hitters like Sonic and Mario, the competition on GameCube is fierce. But Finding Nemo looks and plays different enough to stand out from the rest of the GameCube lineup.

Finding Nemo doesn't entirely break the mold, but it's intelligent, good-looking, and challenging, giving players a near-perfect blend of movie cutscenes and swimmingly good gameplay to tie it all up in a lovely little bow. I had to replay a few levels to get them right, and I did a double take. I thought I would easily breeze through this game. Luckily, it's simply but not entirely easy. Also, I enjoyed the characters, several of the level designs and the puzzles brought it all home.

Gameplay Based on the Pixar Studios movie of the same name, Finding Nemo takes the library of tried-and-true platform elements and descends underwater. If you were a pudgy little plumber on land in the standard platformer, in Travellers' Tales Finding Nemo, you are a squirrelly little Clown Fish trying to navigate the enormity of the world's oceans in search for your lost son, Nemo.

Using a combination of 2D and 2D style techniques, players get the chance to play as little Nemo, his father Marlin, and a friendly, memory-free friendly fish by the name of Dory who helps you out along the way. If you have played the movie-licensed game Tarzan or any of the Crash Bandicoot games, you will instantly feel comfortable playing this. The early levels are filled with training missions that smoothly transition to standard non-training missions without a hitch. Speaking of hitch-less gameplay, the transition from game to movie is technically fluid, while there are almost no visual differences between the two at all. The result is an unending string of events blending happily from game to movie and back again, creating a believable underwater world.

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Travellers' Tales offers little in the way of invention. Whether you're being chased by the giant shark, side-scrolling/swimming between layers of ancient steam pipes, or navigating through disappearing hoops in a follow-the shark-style level, you have played 99% of the game somewhere else before. Having said that, the presentation and organization of said levels is so well done that I didn't mind the formulaic gameplay. There are some exhilarating races with Crush the turtle, a beautiful mission in amongst a forest of jellyfish, and some clever areas in which your fish must pick up a little colored stone and place it in a specific area for a reward. And what's more, given that there are so few underwater games (Ecco was beautiful but…), this fills my deep, unambiguous need to role-play as a fish! Really! Several of the old-fashioned puzzles were a treat too: Remember playing those little puzzle games in the car with your family when it traveled to across the state? Finding Nemo has them in spades.

Mixing twitchy, jump-and-bonk platform elements with collection techniques, players need to collect some stuff, but not everything. Players can collect all the extras for rewards, a smart way of givers betters gamers extra challenge. Collect Shell Rings, swim through Bubble Rings and follow Bubble Trails to made the grade. If you complete the special goals for each level, you're given a starfish, which unlocks secrets in the main menu.

There are few problems, however. While the game design meets its objectives with ease, and the only thing that might trouble some kids is that the mission directives aren't always too clear. I often wondered what my next objective was and I occasionally got lost in a level. Finding Nemo straddles a healthy line between delivering intuitive controls and directives without spelling everything out. I like that. What I didn't like, however, are the insanely long load times in the GameCube version.

Grab a watch and stare at it for three minutes. Go ahead, try it. Starting up Find Nemo on GameCube takes a whopping two minutes -- 120 whole seconds. Read to play? Well, the moment you select whether you want to load a game or start a new one, you will have to wait more than 30 seconds for… the level select screen. No joke. Once you select your level, you will have to wait another 60-80 seconds for the actual level to load. Either the makers of this game don't have kids, or this is some new, cruel way to torture parents. Ironically, the PS2, which by design has a slower disk drive than the GameCube, loads much faster. Chalk it up to a rushed, careless port, but the load times in the GameCube version will try the patience of even the most forgiving gamer.

Graphics Visually, Finding Nemo is not revolutionary. It won't win any technical awards. But Travellers' Tales has definitely achieved a level of underwater beauty that's beautiful, clean and polished. All of the playable fish loco mote with a realistic feeling, and they look cute in the process. The underwater worlds mix a good amount of murky underwater locales with bright colored fish and underwater creatures, from hammerhead sharks, crabs, anemones and octopi. There are more, of course, but they're all lovely.

Sadly, the framerate in the GameCube version doesn't quite hold up -- despite the fixed perspective and (appropriately) shallow draw distance. Sidescrolling sequences run at 30 fps, but frequently drop frames when there are enemies or friends on screen. The 3D on-rails sequences drop to 20fps and below, which severely hampers the sense of speed and takes away a lot of the precision when trying to swim through rings.

As I mentioned before, the transitions from movie to game and back again are smooth, and the cutscenes are funny and come straight from the movie. The menu system is also kid-friendly and easy to navigate too.

Sound What can I really genuine say here? The music is the stuff of happy-making videogames. Clinkity, beepy, repetitive and relatively harmless. The voice acting (in the cutscenes) is straight from the movie, which is pleasing, and gives you that genuine being-there feeling.

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