The Smurfs - Mission Vileaf

[h1] Lego Mario the smurfing game [/h1] My level of knowledge on smurfs evolve arround an old TV series I have seen a couple of episode 20 years ago and some comics read around the same time. With other words i knew some names and thats it. I didnt pick this games for smurf. I choose it because on paper it sounds like one of the TT Lego games for me or some mario like title. Casual arcade collectathon fun so to speak. I didnt expect much and got my fair share of fun out of it. I found the plot intriguing enough to follow through and the voice overs where suprisingly good in terms of writing, humor and voice acting. Making this a enjoyable part of the journey. The smurf world is in trouble and evil vines spread across the smurf forest. Some smurfs are missing and four smurf rise to shine to rescue their fellow friend in blue and stopping what ever evil plan Gargamel has this time. Each level is filled with riddles, secrets and collectables. Riddles can last from movement sequences to finding triggers in order to ride yourself of some obstacles. Your handy devices to accomplish this. A vaccum sort of antidote spraying backpack. It can make you fly, it cleans the world and a can be used to slay enemies in your path. Or it could if you upgrade it. Which make early levels challenging and harder and later easier. Each level felt well balanced. And it should be clear that the main audience of the game are children. I would imagine myself being able to beat the game at a younger age. For me as an adukt I got surprised by two well design levels. One swamp level felt immersivly awesome with gargamel being patrolling arround you and one where you lose you handy device and need play throught the level a stipped to basic smurf. Replaying the level with your device is whole different expierence. All that tells me this game is done with thought and heart behind it. What I personally dont like is collectables and collectathons. I dont wanna put this as bad thing for this game it just I dont enjoy grinding for collectables or grinding at all. This leaves me with the bitter taste of have to much left behind and discorvering everything since I quickly burn out of trying to find everything. For you achievement hunter there is a kinda challening achievement for one of the final levels. Resolving of beating it without being seen. Really fun to do this one. At the end I might wanna play the second game aswell. But not for now. I expected a half taped together franchise money grabbing game and got surprised with good quality adventure game. Will be one game I allow my future kids to play for sure. So long my friends.

Even though I'm not the target audience for this game, I still quite enjoyed it. It's roughly an 8h cozy 3d platformer when you collect most stuff you see along the way. Normal mode is easy enough if you've played a platformer before. But that's exactly what I was looking for. Game ran fine and without any problems through proton and with a controller. Although, the camera and walking speed could be a tad quicker. Dashing becomes a thing only later. There's always a clear indicator where to go and what's optional. Secrets and challenges allow you to upgrade your helper gear for stronger or better moves. The main dialog is fully voice acted and the environments look great. Music fits the scenes. Would have liked a few more enemies and the ability to upgrade within the menu instead of porting back to town.