Into The Vault: Tangled (Nintendo Wii)

Last week, I reviewed the Nintendo DS take on Disney’s Tangled movie. It was… not great. But hey there’s another Tangled game! It’s an exclusive for the Nintendo Wii and it’s a very different game from the DS experience.

In Tangled for the Nintendo Wii you play as both Rapunzel and Flynn and relive their adventure together. They are reliving it too as the framing device for the game is the protagonists telling you the player the story of how they met and the events of the movie. It’s definitely an unnecessary thing but it adds a slightly fresher angle than just playing through the movie beat by beat.

As for the game, it loosely follows the events of the story with a little extra here and there. For one, you fight a lot of royal guards. You also fend off spiders and jump on giant mushrooms and play various minigames through eight pretty short levels. Like you could seriously finish this game in an evening.

And while the game doesn’t look great, it certainly looks like an officially licensed game that would be on the Wii in 2010, not some bad knockoff. There’s a surprising amount of spoken dialogue that’s completely new, not just rehashed clips from the movie, featuring the actual voice actors from the film, so that’s a nice touch.

As you might expect in a game with two characters you play at the same time, Flynn and Rapunzel have different abilities. Flynn is pretty handy with a sword and of course, Rapunzel has her hair which she can use to swing, pull up Flynn to high ledges or move heavy objects along with a frying pan that is honestly somewhat useless compared to Flynn’s sword. Flynn also has the very odd super-power of literally being able to sense buried treasure. Sure, why not?

Honestly the one character who I really feel gets the short shrift is Rapunzel’s little buddy, Pascal. He’s limited to just popping up on screen occasionally for no reason. He probably could’ve been implemented into the gameplay in some fashion.

Tangled for Nintendo Wii is filled with activities. You collects sundrops (for Rapunzel) and coins (for Flynn) while you explore, and as I mentioned, there are various minigames such as bouncing on mushrooms, racing children around the town, horse racing, etc. None of this controls nearly as well as it should and that would be a huge problem if not for one interesting choice the developers made which I feel frees the game from a lot of frustration but also fails to make the game as compelling as it could be.

In a sense, Tangled for Nintendo Wii is an interactive story-book you play through because really, you can’t fail. Do poorly in a mini-game? Doesn’t matter, you still move on. Collect almost no coins or sundrops? Doesn’t matter, you can still keep going. There is no penalty for doing poorly or straight-up failing. There’s no reward for doing well either though. Nothing to unlock, no bonuses to gain, really nothing other than maybe self-satisfaction for knowing you got all the collectibles or beat the record in a mini-game. It’s freeing in the sense that if a minigame is frustrating or just not fun or I missed something in a level, I don’t need to worry, but then also what’s my motivation to try to do well if I get nothing for it?

Additionally, I think it’s a crime that you have an entire level based in the Snuggly Duckling, the thug bar from the movie, and despite all the mediocre minigames in Tangled, there is not one that’s a rhythm game based on “I’ve got a Dream”. C’mon, that’s a no-brainer…

Since this game is on the Wii, I bet you are wondering if there are motion controls that seem incredibly pointless and could be done easier with a button press? YOU BET THERE ARE. You will use motion controls to paint badly, sketch, dig for treasure, and pull things with Rapunzel’s hair. It was mostly responsive but not all the time and much like many games on Wii that felt the need to shoehorn motion controls in just feels so unnecessary.

But honestly thanks to the fact I basically couldn’t fail thereby removing being frustrated for too long at something like a terrible minigame and the fact that exploring as Rapunzel and Flynn which does make up the bulk of the gameplay, I actually had a pretty decent time with Tangled on the Nintendo Wii. It’s not a diamond in the rough or anything (I know, different movie), but if your kid liked the movie and wants a game based on it, this is not a bad option.

That’s all for now, see ya real soon!