The Worst Disney PS2 Games
The PlayStation 2 era was really the last time we got an abundance of licensed games for better or worse. Licensed games certainly still have a strong presence and come out pretty consistently, but there aren’t the consistent tie-ins and spin-offs that you had straight-up piles and piles of released on nearly every platform.
The PlayStation 2, arguably the best console made to date (at least in terms of its library) and currently still the best-selling home console of all time, recently turned 25 (for its Japanese launch, US launch was later in October) and many licensed games were published for the platform, and not surprisingly, most of them were based on Disney properties. One of my earliest posts was listing the five best Disney games to come out on the PlayStation 2 for its 20th anniversary. So for the 25th, I thought I’d list the five worst!
This is not just a bunch of mediocre tie-in games however, these are mostly games that are a level below that. Truly terrible, in some cases nearly unplayable games. This list will only include Disney games, nothing they have acquired like The Simpsons (probably getting its own list someday) or Star Wars (Pixar is ok because they didn’t make any movies or shows before working with Disney even prior to acquisition) . Let’s get started on this videogame nightmare fuel!
#5. Monsters, Inc.
It’s important to note that this is not the game Monsters, Inc.: Scream Team, which while not a great game, is significantly better than this embarrassingly bad direct tie-in to Pixar’s hit film. The game itself is an insultingly dull and simple collect-a-thon that’s barely worth talking about, with sub-par visuals and sound along with the fact they clearly couldn’t get any of the voice cast to work on the game and we get sub-par fill-ins as well.
But what is it’s one saving grace? Monsters Inc. the videogame is actually more jam-packed with extras than most special edition releases of movies! There’s concept art, a studio tour of Pixar, interviews, tons of clips from the movie and more! It’s almost an advergame the way it clearly prioritizes these extras over the actual videogame you presumably wanted to play. That might make it worth collecting for Disney fans, but it’s still a really bad game.
#4. Disney’s Dinosaur
It doesn’t help that this is a rushed tie-in game based on one of Disney’s biggest financial disasters. This particular version was only released in Europe but it’s still a PlayStation 2 release, so it counts.
There are rare cases where a tie-in game rises above the mediocre or even awful IP it is based on but this is definitely not one of those. Even for the era the FMV scenes are of low-quality, the controls suck the levels are short and insultingly simplistic for even slightly older gamers and arguably too complex for the tiny children who might like a game with dinosaurs for no other reason than it has dinosaurs. There were plenty of dull and/or average movie tie-in games released during this era but Disney’s Dinosaur is notably a step below the majority of those.
#3. Disney Hannah Montana: Spotlight World Tour
This might seem like I’m bagging on a game simply because it’s a rhythm game or it’s based on a Disney channel show meant for young girls but that’s really not the case here. If Disney Hannah Montana: Spotlight World Tour accomplished what it ideally set out to do, which is provide a somewhat fun rhythm game based on the show, it wouldn’t be on this list.
This was also an age where rhythm-based games while not numerous, were much more common. The best ones do something interesting with the controls or challenges themselves or at the very least provide fun and/or interesting visuals. Disney Hannah Montana: Spotlight World Tour does none of this. Maybe some very young fans got some fun out of one playthrough just to enjoy the songs but that would’ve had to be it. A pretty low effort even for a game of its type.
#2. Disney’s PK: Out of the Shadows
Donald Duck is my favorite of Disney’s “Fab Five” and he’s got a few excellent games under his belt, so it’s a real shame what turned out to be his last solo outing is such an utter disappointment. Not just a simplistic mediocre 3D action platformer, Disney’s PK: Out of The Shadows also suffers from awful timed levels you’ll probably have to repeat and a very bad camera to battle as well. Just a sad note for one of Disney’s top stars to mostly go out on in the videogame world. Donald would of course go onto major supporting roles in plenty of games but I fear we may never get a cool 3D action platformer for the duck who’s got all the bad luck…
#1. Disney Move
It’s very easy to bag on Sony’s ill-fated, barely used peripheral, The EyeToy. A precursor to even the Nintendo Wii and especially the Xbox Kinect, trying to make motion-gaming cool back in the early 2000s. However, like most of its type, it had some neat ideas that had it gotten proper support and been executed well we might still be playing EyeToy games today.
But either because the technology wasn’t ready or publishers weren’t really willing to give developers proper time to really understand the peripheral and make something great instead we got a bunch of games that barely even functioned and one of those was Disney Move, a collection of mini-games that might’ve been some limited fun if the worked but the motion detection was incredibly poor and there’s not just much more to it. Disney Move simply doesn’t work as intended, it’s basically broken making it easily one of the worst PS2 games Disney or otherwise.
That’s it for today. I will certainly try and have another post up sometime next week so see ya real soon!
