Jumper: Griffin’s Story had me walking on air. I don’t mean that in a heavenly bliss sort of way, but in a more literal sense. There was an entire level in that physically had me running twenty feet above the ground. There was a particular floor, who’s texture would disappear from a certain field of view, which made it seem as if you were standing on nothing. This was only for one level, but considering the game only took me 2 1/2 hours to get through, it was a decent chunk of the campaign. This little bug is a great representation for the overall experience you’ll have with Jumper: Griffin’s Story.
Based on the titular film, the story is about the other main jumper in the movie - Griffin. The opening cinematic shows Griffin as a child watching as his parents are murdered by because of his teleporting abilities. From then on, it’s unclear exactly what’s happening in the plot; the most I could gather that Griffin was angry and going inside pyramids a lot. The cut-scenes are handled comic book-style - which could be cool, but the art is ugly and bland. The cut-scenes are confusing. You’ll often wonder, “where am I, and what am I doing here?”.
The only interesting part of the game is a Simon-Says-style combat system. Every enemy has a little wheel underneath them with 4 attack spots, and depending which button you press (A,B, X, or Y), they attack corresponding to where that button is on the controller. Where there’s a red slot on a specific side of an enemy, your attack will be countered, resulting in you taking damage. The green slots lead into combos which builds up your combo meter. I never actually figured out what the combo meter did. The only problem I ended up having with this was that the little wheel turns, as well as the position of their body. This makes it difficult to discern what button will actually attack where you want it to. It becomes extremely frustrating when you mean to hit a guy from behind, but end up hitting him on his left side instead. Enemies’ “hit-circle” sometimes clips into the ground, completely covering it to a point where you can’t see their weak spot or counter spot.
The few bosses in Jumper: Griffin’s Story are among the most frustrating in the history of videogames. Almost all of them are damage sponges, and inflict an obscene amount of damage. These boss encounters are the only time I died, and I died an awful lot. If they didn’t have such a high amount of health, the game would lose about 30-45 minutes of gameplay, so perhaps it was a deliberate choice on the part of the developer to extend the meager running time.
There’s also a useless combo system. You choose the arrangement of your attacks to form your own combo, which actually isn’t a bad idea. The problem is that it never actually works; you end up wanting to attack an enemy’s weak spot consecutively rather than try to go for a combo because you’ll only be countered in the middle of it. The combos that I tried setting never seemed to carry on to the next level either. Every single time I started a new area, I’d have to go back into the menu and manually set it all over again.
I never did find out how the finishers actually worked in Jumper: Griffin’s Story. A finishing move sees you grab an enemy and randomly teleport him somewhere where he’s sure to die: inside a volcano, inside of a crushing car, or even into a nuclear explosion. These scenes are sometimes surprisingly brutal, but entertaining the first time you see them. They do tend to get old after the 3rd time you leave someone stranded on top of a snowy mountain. This troubled me though - in the movie, Jumpers could only “jump” to places they’d seen in pictures, or been to before. Dropping a guy in the midst of a nuclear explosion must have taken some amazing planning, especially considering he can’t jump back or forward in time.
The camera in Jumper: Griffin’s Story proves to be the most difficult enemy in the game. Sometimes it gets caught behind objects and blocking your view completely of everything. This is VERY annoying when you’re in the middle of combat against a group of enemies. Outside of combat, it gets stuck in the room you were in, causing you try and fix it for a good 5 minutes. This happened several times in one playthrough.
The voiceovers aren’t always terrible. They’re only noticeably bad in a few lines during cutscenes when one character responds to another indirectly. Griffin’s Irish accent is inconsistent - sometimes he overdoes it. Other times it feels as though the actor just couldn’t be bothered to try.
The character animations are something to laugh at. Characters walk like a G.I. JOE doll made from clay; but that doesn’t matter too much, considering you’ll be running everywhere. The running speed never quite feels
right though. It’s always too fast for the smaller environments, or too slow for any of the larger environments you’ll find yourself in. You can teleport around, except then you have to push the direction you want to go, and hold down the teleport button for a length of time depending on the distance you want to travel. This basically ends up taking just as much time as it does to run to where you want to go, rendering it pointless.
At times, the framerate got so low, it literally hurt my eyes. It was fine most of the time, but this is a very short game, so a decent chunk of your playthrough will be spent staring at a slideshow. Jumper: Griffin’s Story was also released on the PS2 and the Wii, where it probably should have stayed.
Jumper: Griffin’s Story is the most lacking game I’ve ever played. When people talk about how film tie-ins are bad, THIS is the reason why. The best thing I can say about the game is that it’s over quickly, and has easy achievements. Redtribe, (the developer responsible for this travesty) was also responsible for Looney Tunes: Acme Arsenal and Space chimps, so I had extremely low expectations for Jumper: Griffin’s Story from the get-go. Despite this, the game still failed to live up to them.
From beginning to end, the entire game lasts about 2 1/2 hours - a short length even in this day and age. Unfortunately, it’s also a running time that’s at least 2 hours too long.
If you ever feel the temptation to play Jumper: Griffin’s Story, don’t. Instead, think of something you absolutely hate doing, and do that instead. There’s a bloody good chance you’ll enjoy yourself more.
