Spontaneous Sunday: Finding Nemo

This weeks Spontaneous Sunday game is Finding Nemo (2003, Traveller's Tales, PS2). I bought this game in March 2016 so I could play it and learn a bit more about Tt before my interview for my QA position at Tt Fusion, but didn't actually get chance to play it at that time. Tt's Head of Design, Arthur Parsons, visited the UCLan games studio last week, and his presentation has spurred me to dust off the PS2 and play Finding Nemo for this weeks Spontaneous Sunday.

What do I expect from the game?

I expect Finding Nemo to be a 2D side scrolling game aimed at kids, featuring characters and locations from the film, but with additional content added to expand the lore and add longevity to the game. I expect it to be quite easy in terms of gameplay due to its young target audience. I expect some puzzle elements. Traveller's Tales are well-known for their proficiency at creating licensed games, so I expect it to be faithful and accurate to the tone and story of the film. I expect it to be a visually appealing game, with colourful textures and environments and low-poly models.

First Impressions

Before launching the game itself, I had a quick look through the manual, which is itself very colourful and detailed and is consistent with the look and feel of the film. I launched the game and reached the front end, which is a 3D underwater scene with plenty of movement, colours and flashing animated text which makes it interesting and visually appealing.

As in the movie, the game begins on Nemo's first day of school. The first level is called "Going To School" and sees the player controlling Nemo and learning the basics of movement while travelling to school accompanied by Nemo's dad, Marlin.

En route, Nemo meets some of his classmates, finds Pearl the octopus and leads her back to safety, clears a giant clam and some rocks from his path, and races his classmates. All the while, Marlin is trying to find any excuse for Nemo not to go to school. This first level is very faithful to the start of the film, and the designers have done a good job of creating gameplay from the events of this scene, while also effectively introducing the game's core mechanics. The first level also offers nice-looking environments, and the game features clips from the movie and the same voice actors.

Level two, "Field Trip" introduces a few more mechanics such as hiding an anemones and collecting krill which act like guardians/lives and allow you to take more damage from enemies. The level also features sections where the player has to jump on bouncy sea sponges and swim through caves. My first impression of the game was that it is a charming child-friendly game that is faithful to the film, and it offers some simple but effective mechanics and fairly varied gameplay.

What do I like about the game?

Finding Nemo's greatest strengths are its visuals, its audio and its representation of the events of the film and how the designers drew gameplay from these events. The game captures the look and feel of the film about as accurately as it possibly could given the PS2's graphical capabilities and the development technology available at the time of its release in 2003. I can definitely see it being visually appealing to kids and fans of the movie. The environments are particularly interesting, with lots to look at and plenty of movement, and really nice textures and models. There's also a wide variety of enemies and dangers.

In-engine cutscene.

One of the 3D chase sequences.

The inclusion of clips from the original movie and the use of the original voice actors also adds to the game's authenticity and is a testament to Disney Pixar's confidence in the project and the quality of Traveller's Tales' licensed games. As the game progresses, you get to play as Marlin and Dory. The audio in general is pretty good, with the voice acting and music standing out. The music does a good job of establishing a mood within each level, whether its a light-hearted one in the first level, or a sense of peril in later levels.

The game's designers did a good job of creating gameplay from the events that occur in the film. Objectives such as finding Pearl in level one and completing puzzles to open doors in the submarine  to escape from Bruce the Shark make for interesting gameplay while still being faithful to the film and relevant to the story. I was expecting the game to have to add things to the story that didn't necessarily happen in the film, but I was pleasantly surprised to find that this wasn't the case and the film did in fact translate very well into gameplay. The core mechanics, such as dashing, picking up objects and collecting things, are simple but well-utilised.

The bonus objective screen.

The levels also feature some bonus objectives, such as swimming through rings of bubbles, placing coloured rocks in the right areas and collecting shells, and these accomplishments are shown in the level select screen. However, the bonus objectives are shown simply as a small picture/symbol, which could make it tricky for the player to tell exactly what it is they need to do to achieve the bonus objectives. Nevertheless, it does add a bit more depth to the levels.

Bonus objectives include placing coloured rocks in the right areas.

Completing the bonus objectives unlocks simple bonus levels. After completing a level, the player is returned to the level select screen where they can now see the time in which they completed it. The simple addition of a completion time encourages replaying and adds longevity to the game. However, with the game probably being aimed at younger gamers, the difficulty of completing the bonus objectives could well mean that they will never get chance to play the bonus levels.

One of the bonus levels.

What do I not like?

Finding Nemo has a number of downsides, the most detrimental of which is its difficulty level. The game takes a rather steep increase in difficulty after the 2nd level, and it soon becomes an increasingly difficult and at times frustrating experience as the game progresses. This is due to a number of things such as there being too many enemies and dangers, too few of the krill that act as extra hits before being killed, disorienting level layouts, too few checkpoints and puzzles that are too difficult - such as sliding block puzzles. I can imagine that young gamers would really struggle with this game. I think that more time should have been invested into regulating the game's difficulty level, especially seeing as it is based on a kid's film.

I think the sliding block puzzles are unnecessarily challenging.

The is mostly played like a sidescroller, but theres also chase/race sections where the player swims either towards or away from the camera, which provides a change of pace and variety, but often doesn't play as well and can be awkward of frustrating. In many of these stages, you have to hit rings of bubbles or collectables in your path, but they can very difficult to hit, and dangers can be too difficult to avoid.

Another more minor negative point is that the game doesn't do enough to communicate objectives to the player. This includes both critical path objectives and bonus objectives. It would be beneficial to have a simple, one-line objective on the pause menu. This lack of direction could cause players to become lost or not know what they are meant to be trying to achieve.

Final Thoughts

Overall, Finding Nemo does a good job of capturing the spirit of the film, with good audio and visuals and well thought-out level goals. The bonus objectives and bonus levels and the variety of gameplay stages helps to keep the gameplay interesting and fresh. However, it really is hampered by its excessively difficult and often frustrating gameplay, which has a negative impact on the overall enjoyment of the experience.