Nightmare Before Christmas: Oogie's Revenge

The Core Video Games Forum
#1

… yeah.

Story-wise: Why did they hand this over to CAPCOM of all people?! Those maroons can’t write any plot more complicated than “save world”, possibly with “save girl” tossed in. And this is NBC!

Gameplay-wise: Oh, so THAT’s why they handed it over to Capcom.

I’ve only played the beginning chapters, and it feels a bit like Castlevania SHOULD be like in 3D. Though I sure wish Jack wouldn’t yell “Soul robber!” whenever I tap the triangle button to make him use his nuclear-green slime whip to grab an enemy and use said enemy to smash other enemies into the ground.

Now that is mighty badass.

There are many little annoying elements like that, but hey, a lot of it can be forgiven by the sheer fact that you’re Jack Skellington beating the snot out of mechanical skeletons with a neon green possibly sentient whip.

However, the game commits one grave sin in that it might just make me sick of hearing “This is Halloween”, and that’s just pleain evil. They chose to use that for the battle theme (yes, with singing), and you get attacked every other minute.

Oh, and did I mention that it’s an action musical?

“This WILL be the last time you hear the Oogie song!”

This might just be the most bizarre thing I have ever played. And I’ve played Psychonauts.

#2

After watching that video, I can concur that this game has some crazy shit going on there. Action Musical would be pretty accurate.
Funny how this comes up after I just watched the movie yesterday.

#3

After playing some more, I have to say that even if the story is on the bland side, it still has the strength of charm thanks to being NBC, even if it feels like a fanfic. It’s a bit like how the main pull for Super Smash Brothers are the familiar characters. Take those away and what do you have? If the characters were new to that game, you’d have a pretty fun but otherwise pretty unremarkable fighting game.

It’s a surprisingly good game for being based on a movie, probably because it’s a sequel so they could take some liberties instead of trying to adapt the movie to another medium.

While there isn’t anything mind blowing in this game, there have been some good moments. Like I said, every boss battle is a musical number but the songs’ lyrics aren’t very long, so you’re bound to hear every damn number at least twice. The texts are mostly meh (except for the rewrite of “Making Christmas” - “Take our Town Back” - which was cringeworthy and unfortunately used as a fight theme for a while), but at least these people can sing. Whenever the lyrics come to an end and the song starts over, there’s a brief dialogue between Jack and whoever he’s fighting, and he often starts to sound more frustrated or tired between the verses. I had some troubles with the second Oogie fight and hearing Jack gasp out “Is that the best you’ve got?” while Oogie is all “Muhahahaha!”, while not bonechilling, added to the atmosphere.

But Christ on a cracker, couldn’t they have made some new sound effects? I’m fine with the clicks when going around in menus sound familiar, but one really wouldn’t think that Jack’s footsteps would sound exactly like Dante’s. They have quite different builds after all, and I don’t think they could wear the same shoes.

#4

Certainly sounds in-character.