Shrek SuperSlam (DS)

CNET editors' rating: 3.0 stars Good
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Product summary

Gamespot editors' review

• Reviewed by: Greg Mueller
• Reviewed on: 12/14/2005
• Released on: 10/25/2005

Shrek SuperSlam is a 3D melee fighting game for the Nintendo DS. The game lets you play as one of 12 characters as you fight in two- to four-player matches in one of the 16 stages in the game. The fighting system is limited to a couple of strikes and a few basic combos, but there's no reason to do anything other than mash a single attack button, because that almost always works just fine. Shrek SuperSlam is a mediocre beat-'em-up that just happens to have a familiar cast of characters. But, no matter how much you love the Shrek movies, the novelty of this game will wear off well before you get your money's worth.

All your favorite Shrek characters are here, plus a few you probably never really cared about.

The goal in Shrek SuperSlam is to collect fairy dust by pummeling your enemies in up-to-four-player battles. After you get 100 fairy dust points, you can hit any attack button to "superslam" your opponents, which sends them flying off the screen. There are a handful of different modes in the game, but for the most part you don't have to do anything but mash buttons and rack up as many superslams as possible within two minutes.

There's a story mode in Shrek SuperSlam, but the story has no bearing whatsoever on the gameplay. Donkey invites Shrek and some other friends over for a game of cards, but his rambunctious children, the Dronkeys, keep interrupting the game. In order to calm the critters down, you have to choose a character to tell the Dronkeys a bedtime story. The story changes depending on which character you choose, but aside from the initial setup and a brief closing scene, the story has nothing at all to do with the rest of the game. After the intro, you fight your way through a series of one-on-one battles. Each battle lasts two minutes, and the person with the most superslams at the end of the match is the winner.

Melee mode is the basic fighting mode, but there are quite a few options that let you adjust the rules of the game. You can choose the number of players, the stage, the time limit, the amount of fairy dust you get for each hit, and more. You can play a simple timed match; a race match, in which the first one to get a certain number of slams is the winner; a fairy dust challenge, in which you just have to collect a certain amount of fairy dust; and a tag mode, in which the last person slammed automatically respawns with a full helping of fairy dust.

There's also a megachallenge mode, which gives you 32 single-player challenges to complete. These challenges range from a memory-type game in which you flip cards trying to match up like pairs, to basic melee matches with specific stipulations. You might have to slam nine enemies without getting slammed yourself, or slam an opponent within 30 seconds. The challenges are extremely easy, so even though there are quite a few of them, you can still burn through the entire set in an hour or two.

The best mode in the game is multiplayer melee. The game supports up to four players, but unfortunately there's no game sharing, so you'll have to somehow convince your friends to get a hold of their own copies of the game. If you only have one other friend who owns a copy of the game, you can choose to play one-on-one matches, or you can add some bots to play against. You can also customize your game with a variety of options just like in the single-player melee mode. The one problem with multiplayer mode is that there's no running tally of wins versus losses over a number of rounds. It's one of those things that you don't miss until it's gone.

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