One of the things that the console version of Shrek 2 really nailed was the visuals. The levels weren't huge, but they were full of detail, and the characters looked great and animated nicely. Alas, this is not the case with Shrek 2 for the PC. The levels look pretty bland throughout, and a lot of the elements repeat--there's actually a sequence near the end of the game where you play through different parts of a level as three different characters, which leads to some pretty egregious recycling. The main characters are pretty rough approximations of their motion-picture counterparts and act as a fine example of why the details count. It's the small stuff, like the clumsy animation transitions and the somewhat stingy character models, that keeps the characters from looking quite the way they should. The enemies you'll face look decent, and considering the game's length, or lack thereof, there's a decent variety of foes.
It remains a mystery why Activision would develop an entirely unique Shrek 2 game for the PC.
One of the few things that's shared between the console versions and the PC version of Shrek 2 is the voice cast. Some of the stand-ins for the actual celebrity voices heard in Shrek 2 the movie don't quite match up, but the cast is generally pretty adept, and they're given some decent material to work with, too. The voice work shines the most during cutscenes, and there's some good in-game voice work too. However, the characters feel the need to talk a lot, but don't have a lot to say, leaving you to hear the same speech clips over and over again. The soundtrack suits the game for the most part, using lots of lute-and-flute arrangements to give the game a nice storybook feel, though about halfway through the game, the soundtrack veers off into wah-wah-driven funk that would seem more appropriate as the opening theme to a '70s cop show--it's actually pretty good stuff, it just seems wildly out of place. There's not much to say about the in-game sound effects. They're serviceable, in that they don't betray the feel of the environments, but they're not terribly spectacular, either.
What makes the Shrek movies fun for the family is the inclusion of something for everyone--there's plenty of slapstick and scatological humor for the kids as well as some sly pop culture references for the older folks. But Shrek 2 for the PC is strictly for kids, though considering its clunky controls and short running time, it's not even a terribly good game for them.
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