Blues Brothers 2000

The first thing we heard about this game was that it had the official Blues Brothers license and that it was going to be published by Titus. Instantly a horrified look came over everyone in the office as painful memories of Superman came racing back into our heads. After a few seconds however it finally dawned on us that the last couple of titles from Titus – namely Xena and Roadsters – had been a definite improvement on the Man of Steel's dive into the depths of gaming hell. Curious to find out more we searched for clues until at last a playable version arrived.

Blues Brothers 2000 was not the best film in the world, failing to build on the previous success of Dan Akroyd and James Belushi. So why would anyone want to make a game about it? Well Blues Brothers 2000 is only based loosely around the film, in that a few of the levels were locations in the movie and the characters look cool and wear shades. The rest of the game is completely different, Blues Brothers 2000 weaves many styles of game into a whole. The basic story is that Elwood must escape from prison and put the band back together before the great Battle of the Bands.

Before reaching your great singer's soiree you must solve the puzzles of the prison and three other spectacular scenarios while at the same time rescuing your band members and collecting songs for your group to perform. There are a wide range of enemies along the way who all try to stop you reaching the ball. These include Prison Guards, CIA Agents, Mod Nutters and even the Mafia, so you need to learn the special attacks and collect all the various power-ups which are scattered around the levels.

The game itself is basically a 3-D platform adventure but it also has a few side scrolling levels and even a Bust A Groove style dancing section. The music is kinda groovy and there are four different songs which all featured on the film's soundtrack. The levels are varied and colourful and the gameplay is great, with moveable cameras to help you focus on where you are going. There are numerous puzzles, varying from simply entering numbered vents, to trying to dash across the courtyard of the prison without being spotted by one of fifty moving spotlights.

Blues Brothers 2000 is still not finished and could yet improve further, but it's already better than we expected and is great fun to play. The graphics are looking great and the levels are extremely varied, each one offering unique puzzles and enemies. There is a two-player game at the moment but the final version may well have a four-player option too. The multiplayer game is all about rhythm and finger-popping button-tapping madness, as you strive to boogie each of your opponents off the dancefloor – which is great fun and highly addictive. Blues Brothers 2000 is looking good at the moment and could be a surprise success. It is currently due for release in June so stay tuned, for more details coming soon.

Blues Brothers was a fantastic movie with some great gags, top songs and some of the best chase scenes ever filmed. The Blues Brothers 2000 movie was... erm, not quite so good but then it didn't help that one of the stars of the first movie had died fairly soon after making it and thus (obviously) couldn't star in the sequel.

When we heard that Titus were bringing out a game based on the second movie – well, we were a little worried. After all, the film didn't exactly give them much to work with... the good news though is that Blues Brothers 2000 the game is definitely better than Blues Brothers 2000 the movie!

Blue Bottle

The plot of the game is a fairly simple one. Elwood (a Blues Brother) starts off in prison where he's just received a postcard from a nun (as you do) asking him to find and take care of a little boy called Buster. Quite why the nun didn't simply find someone not currently 'banged up' is anybody's guess but she didn't and so Elwood rises to the task and sets about getting out of jail.

Here the storyline gets a little vague, for apparently the only way that Elwood can find Buster is by reforming his band – strange but I guess you've got to have some kind of premise for getting lots of guys in shades together to play music. As a result though it's not just Buster that you've got to find – you've also got to track down and recruit the other two members of Elwood's band plus recover their instruments without which they're just so much nattily-dressed extra baggage.

Blue Moon

The gameplay in Blues Brothers 2000 is very definitely of the 3D platform adventure persuasion. You've got to guide Elwood around the many levels of the game, avoiding or decking all manner of strange bad guys, solving various puzzles and collecting different items.

Each of the levels is contained within a themed 'world'. So Elwood starts off in the prison and all the levels within have suitably themed bad-guys – prison guards, convicts, a mad prison cook – and puzzles. Next level is Chicago where guards are replaced with pedestrians, convicts with angry dogs... you get the idea. Each world is divided up into fairly distinct levels within which the action takes place. You can wander around the levels at will (although some of them require you to find specific objects – like keys for example – before you can enter) and you need to solve various puzzles or perform different tasks in order to progress. Often you find that you come into a level but can't reach a specific location within it until you've done something else on a different level. Chicago for instance has levels with fire hydrants in which can be used to carry you up to otherwise unreachable platforms, however these hydrants must be first be turned on. To turn a hydrant on you need to find your way through the sewers but before you can enter the sewers you need to unlock the manhole cover blocking the entrance by finding and using the wrench – it ain't all that straightforward, believe us!

Blue Peter

Blues Brothers 2000 is one of those games that has its share of good points but also its fair share of bad points. The early levels for example are fairly linear and a little enclosed giving you the impression that there's not much to do and you're going to finish the game fairly easily. Fortunately as you progress though, the levels open out, the gameplay gets more tricky and there's also a much needed injection of variety – if the whole game had the look of just the first world you'd probably find yourself switching off before long. Don't get us wrong, the graphics in the first world are okay – it's just that it being set in a prison all the colours are... well, a bit drab.

Anyway, once you start getting into the game it has some rather nice surprises on offer. It would have been easy to have simply made the puzzles fairly simplistic 'find and use' affairs (ie: find the red key, open the red door) but thankfully there's a little more to many of the tasks in this game than that. Puzzles range from a fairly basic but still quite interesting 'match the objects' game through to several rather more complicated Bust-A-Groove-style dancing challenges – only not quite as good as in Bust-A-Groove.

Blue Bird

The variety of the puzzles in the game and the humour which has been well-implemented combine to give Blues Brothers 2000 a much needed boost. Many of the characters are fairly comical, and Elwood has some rather amusing reactions to certain hazards and enemies – like when he gets hit by a vehicle for instance and gets squashed paper-thin.

However, while variety is one of Blues Brothers 2000's strong points, it can also be seen as one of its failings. The programmers have experimented with a number of gameplay styles on the different stages so that in one you find yourself running along linear levels almost like the game was a 2D platformer, in another you're bouncing around all over the place like a flea on a trampoline, and in yet another you're running towards the camera chased by a mutant crocodile, Crash Bandicoot-style.

Now this may not sound like much of a problem but that's because we haven't mentioned the real downside of Blues Brothers 2000 – the camera. On some levels the camera is fine and you can run, jump and breakdance your way around with little or no trouble. On others however the camera has an annoying habit of spinning around at the worst possible moment – just as you're making a split-second jump for instance – and thus causing your demise. This is made worse by the fact that sometimes the controls can be a little unresponsive. This isn't the case all of the time, in fact it's probably fair to say that 95% of the time if you tap a button Elwood responds instantaneously, however you can more or less guarantee that when you really, really need an immediate response that's when there will be a tiny delay that inevitably sends Elwood plunging to his doom.

Blue Jeans

Overall, Blues Brothers 2000 is an enjoyable game although it does hark back to the old days of gaming when you'd find yourself throwing down your pad or banging your keyboard in frustration as you died at exactly the same point – where you'd already died sixteen times already – yet again. This isn't really a bad thing as it encourages you to practice and Blues Brothers 2000 does allow you to save whenever you want to. It does mean however that if you're one of the generation of gamers brought up on the fairly recent, far easier style of games that seem to be pretty-much the norm these days – the kind of person who found Donkey Kong 64 'a bit too tough really' – then you're probably going to find Blues Brothers 2000 a little on the difficult side. That said though, the humour, puzzles and some fairly catchy tunes make this a game that's definitely worth a look!

Titus is once again making use of its Blues Brothers license, slightly updated this time with characters from the second flick. Developed by Player l and due in October. Blues Brothers 2000 has you guiding Elwood Blues in a quest that's a little bit Mario 64 (with free-roaming areas) and a little bit Crash Bandicoot (with track-based stages). It also packs lots of digitized tunes and a four-player Battle Mode.

When compared with the movie of the same name, Blues Brothers 2000 contains some inaccuracies. Does this matter? Not really. But what the hey, why not mention it? There's not much else to say about this dud of a game.

In the film, our hero Elwood is released from prison. In a cheesy videogame move, presumably included in order to create some action, Elwood must fight the evil warden and his thugs in order to escape Joliet. After Joliet, he has three more levels to look forward to – Chicago, The Spooky Graveyard, and the Swamp. He is collecting not only band members, but blues notes for some almighty powerful tunes. You can't blame the creators; after all, the plot of the movie – gathering together the band members to compete in the Battle of the Bands – is not exactly standard action-packed game fare. The more you play, the more this becomes painfully apparent.

The BB 2000 manual says Elwood has been in jail for six years. You can tell from the perky cartoon that he's definitely aged well. (Why do I care? The game gave little else to care about.) The manual also told me to "straighten my tie, adjust my hat, and slide on the shades," so I suited up in armor for some killer action. All I could think while playing was, "Why did they make this game?" That, and the fact that the bouncy little man in the black suit looked nothing like Dan Aykroyd. A perverse side of me started to wish they'd made a game from the original film, so I could see how Belushi would bounce – but not really.

Gameplay, Controls, Interface

The controls and interface for Blues Brothers 2000 are remarkably similar to Super Mario 64, only worse. Movement works the same, but with fewer options – no triple jump, swimming or flying. Point of view is virtually identical to Mario 64. The same holds true for combat. You fight like Mario, but with fewer options. Overall, the game interface could be considered a technical prequel to Super Mario 64, which says quite a bit.

Along the way, you fight roughly four types of enemies featured in the level, pick up the ten musical notes for the world song, and defeat the boss of the level. The levels are full of flimsily-justified enemies, such as electrified zombies in the prison and a woman in the city who insists on attacking you for no discernible reason. Some of the items you interact with are a bit of a stretch, such as riding on clouds in Chicago to get to higher points on the buildings.

This game is chock-full of things to jump on, but it just doesn't give much satisfaction. It's like one giant kid's puzzle that shouldn't have been created. Everything is spelled out oh-so-very-clearly. Stand on one of the many gold records lining the floor, and you get a nice useful little tip. Get stuck there during a fight with some nondescript goon, get paralyzed on said record, and read nice tip spelled out in large blocky kid letters over and over and over.

Unfortunately, you also encounter people who will teach you dance moves to help win the Battle of the Bands. You might think that competitive dancing might be dull. You would be right. Since this portion of the game consists of manipulating the control stick and pushing the A and B buttons without any real action on screen, it gets monotonous quickly.

Multiplayer

Why the designers felt it was necessary to add a multiplayer mode at all, I have no idea. They seem to have chosen the worst part of the game for multiplayer treatment. Doom-style deathmatch it ain't. It's… drum roll, please… competitive dancing! After approximately one minute, I was ready to pull my hair out from boredom and I think my adversary's eyes glazed over. It doesn't exactly get the old adrenaline racing. For that matter, it's not much of a test of skill or coordination either. I have a feeling even a 5-year-old would be bored with this.

Graphics

The graphics hurt my eyes. They managed to combine bright, angular and grainy in just the wrong way. Aesthetically speaking, the high degree of contrast was nice, but it wasn't suited for long minutes of gameplay. The overall effect was garish and cartoony, but initially it put me in a happy, jumpy little mood. Alas, it was a quick fix that dissipated well before the loss of all my nine lives.

Audio

Ah, the music – the basis of the game (a bad sign). The longer I played, the more tinny and repetitive the music became, like scratching an itch that is never quite relieved. There's something profoundly dissonant about some Mario-nette in a suit jumping and bouncing around to blues muzak – something that crosses all the circuits in your brain. The repeatedly sung phrase "cheaper to keep her" became particularly irritating after hearing it for the 100th time.

The sound effects were fun and crisp, lots of boings and smacks, though I wondered why Elwood made the same bouncing noise with the spring shoes on as he did normally. Couldn't they have added unique sound effects for just this one item? Hmmm?

I much preferred the voiceovers, particularly the prison lunch lady who droned, "Do you want some of THIS?" in a voice resembling a vulture with a head cold, while hurling lumps of indistinct green mush your way. If there's one thing this game has going for it, it's the humor.

Originality/Cool Features

I found the dancing portion of the game both quite original and painfully dull. Pushing the A and B buttons and operating the control stick as directed was slightly less exciting then playing Simon. Most of the things that were unique about this game were unique in the wrong way. If asked my opinion by the designers face to face, I'd have to say, "It's, uh, original," and put on a nice sincere smile.

The only things this game had going for it were the imaginative and quirky bad guys and bosses, which stood out even more thanks to the ultra-bright graphics and repetitive, hypnotizing soundtrack (I can't figure out another reason for them to have made this. Maybe it was a front for secret government experiments). These included a giant alligator that looked like a dog and a spider colored to resemble a football jersey. I was actually scared by the woman in the city who charges you with her purse, and the prison nurse with the needle was a nice queasy touch. The Venus flytrap monsters made me want to hold imaginary conversations with them for my own amusement.

The whole experience soon became surreal and dreamlike. I'm not sure that was what the designers intended. They seem to have been going for a nice kids' game. I feel I have to give the designers credit, but I'm not sure what for.

Bottom Line

This game suffers from genre identity problems. Jumpy kids' games like Mario and Donkey Kong are usually much more rooted in fantasy. To make up for this, the creators of BB 2000 jazzed everything up, creating cartoon oddities out of real life, and occasionally throwing in an electrified zombie or a giant plant or two. While it's creative and amusing in places, it really isn't enough. Games like this require actual world-building to make an enjoyable atmosphere. This means not just coming up with interesting enemies, but a progressively increasing variety of them as well. That the movie didn't translate well is no excuse; it's clear from what the developers accomplished that they could have done better.

The subject matter of the Blues Brothers 2000 movie is fun, but gritty. I could, perhaps, imagine a game being made based on it, but not this one. I expected something with more action, a little racing, more of a comic book feel – something for older children or adults who might actually get the humor (one of the movie's main characters is, after all, a bartender in a strip club).

I could find no walkthroughs on the web, and only one measly hint aside from the Gameshark codes – which seems indicative of the game's popularity. I keep wondering, why bother licensing the game for a mediocre and none-too-popular movie?

After playing, I felt like a victim of a sick joke. Sure, I laughed, but is this really how we want our video games to make us feel? I am still shaking my head, trying to dislodge the image of Elwood stepping left to right to learn his "dance moves," waving his big ol' mitten-like hands about ineffectually. I cannot for the life of me figure out why this was supposed to be entertaining. While not a terrible game, Blues Brothers 2000 suffers in comparison to similar games on the market. I wouldn't buy this one, but I would rent it for a day or two just to witness its weirdness.