Don’t feel too bad if you’ve not even heard of the film this game has been tossed off to accompany. It’s not Pixar, and it’s not Dreamworks – they’re doing very nicely with Wall-E and Kung Fu Panda, thanks very much, and Space Chimps, with its so-so animation and C-list voice talent, is never going to be able to compete with either movie. It’s Don Bluth-esque. The set-up is promising enough – Ham, a circus chimp descended from the first simian in space, is press-ganged into joining a monkey-manned mission to a new galaxy, alongside play-it-by-the-book captain Luna, and lunkhead Titan. When the hairy trio arrives on a strange planet, they find themselves dealing with a brightly-coloured civil war, and charged with the task of defeating the evil King Zartog.

The reason we’ve gone into the movie in such detail is because there’s literally nothing to say about this staggeringly woeful tie-in that won’t have occurred already to anyone who’s ever suffered through any of the scores of invention-free CGI cartoon platformers that have been unceremoniously plonked on our console in the past. Whether you’re traveling through the belly of a giant sand beast or swinging through the alien jungle, the double-jumping, swinging, switch-flicking and so on are so exhaustingly familiar that you can zip through with your eyes closed from the word ‘go’. The truly dire visuals are just the canker on the cake. Some children may enjoy the mediocre movie, but even they will recognise a complete rip-off of a game when they see it. This is a worthwhile game purchase in the same way that a greasy Happy Meal is a healthy source of nourishment.

Aug 22, 2008