Should these birds be angry?
From the makers of the hit ICE AGE series comes RIO, a 3D comedy adventure about Blu, a rare domesticated bird who travels to the exotic land of Rio. In this multiplayer video game, Blu goes on the adventure of his life, with the help of his female counterpart, Jewel, and a group of wise-cracking and smooth-talking city birds! Blu and his new friends journey through Rio, dodging soccer balls, collecting tropical fruits and soaring across the beach. He participates in amazing games and ultimately, forms a conga line and dances his way to first place at the Carnaval ceremony. While the main character is Blu, players will also have a chance to play as the other characters from the movie in this multiplayer party game!
Rio is doing quite well at the box office, but can the game beat the curse of tie-ins? Well, to put it simply…no. It’s not the worst tie-in ever and it’s good to see a game for 4 players instead of another below par platformer that lasts only 2 hours. Rio is a collection of mini-games where you are pitted against 3 other rivals either friend or AI, but there’s no online play. The minigames themselves are a mixture of throwing/avoiding objects, racing and button mashing. There are over 40 mini-games that will come up randomly through different modes like Story, Party, Carnaval, Carnaval Wheel, and Garland Gala.
The major problem with Rio is that the minigames are inconsistent when compared to other minigames compilations like Mario Party/Wario Ware. Some aren’t too bad, but there are others that are just plain awful to play. You can choose from 6 characters, but they all handle the same and no-one player has any advantage over the others. You can even make the game easier by adjusting the difficulty to make it a total breeze.
Achievement hunters will be shocked to see that there are 50 achievements for this game. While that number isn’t new to games these days, it’s still a lot for a kids game that runs out of steam very quickly. Visually, it’s very average and the voice-acting is irritatingly cheesy, but I’m sure fans of the film will enjoy it more than me.
The Verdict
Rio is your average minigames collection. It adds nothing new to the table while reaffirming that games based on films are rarely any good. It has some good moments, but they are too far and between to recommend.
