From kids to adults, everyone loves Disney World, mostly everyone anyway, and everyone that's been to Disney World knows how unforgettable and one-of-a-kind it's rides are. So wouldn't it be great to make those unforgettable rides into a videogame. Eidos thinks so and if it was everything as spectacular as Disney World you might also. But shall I say the Magic Kingdom is missing a little bit of it's magical shine. What this game does is recreate some of these rides such as Space Mountain, Haunted Mansion, Jungle Cruise, Pirates of the Caribbean and others. It has you racing through them in Mario Kart style fashion collecting Mickey balloons containing power ups and weapons. The track design is actually quite good from beginning to end, if it's on the ride, it's mostly in the tracks. The only problem with this, the tracks are missing some graphical shine, it's very clear that this was a Playstation port. And while the graphics look OK, they fall just below average for the Dreamcast. They recreate the rides quite nicely, but they just don't get the job done as far as looking graphically impressive. Splash Mountain just looks terrible and while it has the right scenes in the right places, it's just plain ugly, the backgrounds look way too 32-bit. But despite the lack luster graphics, the tracks should please most of us, just by the design. They did a fairly good job of recreating all of the rides.
The characters are another questionable issue. You would think a Disney game would contain the high profile Disney characters. There's no Mickey, Minny, Goofy, Pluto, Donald or Daisy. Instead they are replaced with Chip, Dale, Jiminy Cricket and a handful of little known characters. This is quite a disappointment for those of us expecting the usual Disney characters. The in-game music is excellent, every track (ride) has it's own original music. This adds wonders to the game as far as recreating the rides. From Zippity-Doo-Dah to the Pirates of the Caribbean and Haunted Mansion themes they are all in here. As far as the sound effects go, they are scarce, there are no character voice samples and hardly any other in game sound effects for that matter.
Gameplay is fast and the framerate is fairly constant. It's a fairly easy game that's basically designed for kids. The only problem with this is the control. It's fairly simple but you often tend to get stuck behind different track obstacles and if you try to turn around it's almost impossible. This gets rather aggravating. And the game is very unforgiving, get to far behind and you can forget it, you'll never catch up. So while it seems to be designed for a younger audience, they might find it difficult to keep up with it's speed and deal with the often lackluster control. Also every track has different vehicles to control but they all seem to handle the same. The 4-player mode is a fine addition to the game, but the track detail greatly decreases in this mode. But all in all it's still a fun game to play with friends. Another downside to the gameplay, it seems every time you have a good lead you get nailed by a pile of acorns, which are one of the weapons used in the game. Once these acorns hit you, sometimes five in a row or more, which is ridiculous, you're going from first to last place and you can forget about catching up. It often seems as though the computer controlled drivers team up against you. The power ups and weapons used in the game are as follows: Acorns, remember the turtle shells from Mario Kart, they are the same exact thing they only look different. Homing acorns, the equivalent of the red turtle shells in Mario Kart. Guided Bottle Rocket, once you fire one of these off the computer takes control of your cart and you guide the missile into an opponent, this just never seems to work right, you either wind up hitting a wall with it or the computer messes up while controlling your kart. This is more of a curse than anything, trust me you don't want to get stuck with one of these in your arsenal. Teacup mine, this puts whoever runs into it in a spinning tea cup, going out of control wobbling down the track. Frog Spell, it turns racers into frogs, which move at a very slow place. And finally Turbo and invincibly, which are basically self explanatory.
There's defiantly replay value and fun to be had throughout the games, I just wished they could have polished it up and got all the kinks out. Despite all it's flaws, I still could recommend this game for a rental, for anyone familiar with Disney World. But only the Disney World fanatic should lay down the cash and buy this one.-Jason
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