Here’s something I’m looking forward to; Christmas Eve. Some may argue that the day itself is more exciting, but I like the day spent before, doing absolutely nothing, sleeping in late, and getting an early Christmas present in the form of yet more pajamas. But this year, I’m also looking forward to the Dante’s Inferno demo that’s scheduled for the 24th of December. Why? Because hopefully it’ll be better than the stream of dull demos that have “graced” Xbox Live lately, the latest of which being Planet 51.

It really shouldn’t be this bad. Planet 51 presents itself as a sandbox game, a kid’s version of Grand Theft Auto, if you will. You take control of an alien, apparently named “Lem”, and wander around a cityscape that looks an awful lot like a modern take on what 50’s America looked like, picking up “quests” as the game likes to call them. Each “quest” begins with a badly done cut-scene, and then you get thrown into a mini-game. Great.

The game seems geared towards driving stuff, which would be great, if the handling of said stuff didn’t suck. Every vehicle available felt slow, even when boosting, so the racing missions were dull, even with an ability to bash other drivers. You’re given no indication of the controls, so it’s only through screwing around that you realise the right stick can be used to slide left and right, rather then just spinning with the left stick, and also that the boost works by pressing A. Some form of tutorial would be nice, you know? The other types of mission were uninspired. One saw the player taking control of a little robot that starts of by getting patronised by the main character (“You like rocks, don’t you?” No, of course I don’t, you dumb prick) before being thrown into an area where rocks fall from the sky and you must collect the “special” rocks, without any prior knowledge of what said rocks look like. The final mission available gave you a car with a gorilla trailing in a cage behind, and told you that you have to drive safely so as not to anger the gorilla. Of course, the gorilla gets angry whenever you turn the car, or boost, so that advice is totally useless. The gorilla isn’t even much of an annoyance.

The graphics are actually alright, so clearly some effort has gone into making a cartoon adventure look pretty rather than just churn it out quickly for every console (looking at you Golden Compass). That said, the animation itself is weak, with characters doing the fish-lip motions rather than actually lip-syncing. The environments are pretty, and there’s lots of bright colours for all the kiddies. In fact, the graphics are probably the best part of the package, so it’s a shame the gameplay sucks.

And the sound too. Well, if there is any that is. In the main hub world you only hear snippets of radio when a car passes close by, and there seems to be a looping distant voice going “Hey Lem!” which gets right on your nerves after about two minutes. In the missions themselves the sound takes a backseat, and is badly made and boring at best. Even the voice acting is poor, with characters talking without emotion a few times. Still, John Cleese (or a John Cleese impersonator, I couldn’t quite tell) is heard briefly if you start terrorising the town, so that’s nice.

Movie tie-ins shouldn’t be this way. There should be at least some effort put into them, rather than simply throwing a title out there to generate extra cash to go on top of the stacks of cash the movie studios are rolling in from the film itself. Look at Surf’s Up, for example. That was a great game! Sure it was short, but at least it was a novel idea for a movie tie-in. Planet 51 is just another GTA clone. If you’ve got kids, you might be forced into buying it. I don’t, so I can safely say I won’t pick this one up, despite it already being available in stores. Except perhaps for ironic reasons.

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