“Now I’ve seen it all” – Madagascar

**Madagascar** (Toys for Bob/Activision, PlayStation 2, 2005)

When Shrek went from ‘the gulag’, in which Dreamworks staff were exiled, to a huge success, it proved the launchpad for a very successful run of Dreamworks computer animated films. And like Pixar previously, these lent themselves rather obviously to the extra opportunities of video game spin-offs. Shrek 2 the video game was a #5 hit in 2004. The next year, zoo escape caper film Madagascar’s week at the top of the UK movie box office was followed by the video game spending two weeks at the top of the charts. Given the way it climbed to the top, it may have been helped by word-of-mouth about some of its positive qualities.

Madagascar is at heart a 3D platformer based on an animation primarily aimed at children, and it does have some issues typical of those. It doesn’t look great, not helped by the ugly character designs it’s lumbered with from the film. It’s stuck with the pretty questionable plot of its source material, too. And on the sound front, Dreamworks’s approach to celebrity voice casting makes the typical fact that it has a stand-in cast all the more obvious; without knowing the film I could immediately tell that the giraffe in the game was specifically not being played by David Schwimmer. Repeated voice lines while going around the levels get very annoying. It does not play like a game which had an abundance of budget or time available for polish.

What Madagascar has a great deal of, though, which was lacking from, say, Monster’s Inc.: Scare Island (and, for that matter, Revenge of the Sith), is surprise and delight. It is bursting with ideas as well as collectibles, and the way it integrates its different ways of playing keeps it as a coherent experience despite its variety.

The first level in the zoo serves as tutorial and introduction to all of the characters, giving you a set of (sometimes literal) hoops to jump through to make sure you’re set up with the moves you need. For the penguins, there is a fishing minigame where you are tasked with getting specific coloured fish from a pool, while onlookers pass by. And then it smoothly transitions within the same arena to asking you to steal hats and glasses from those same onlookers, what seemed like background details revealed as part of the game. It has a little bit of a feel of climbing out the top of level 1-2 in Super Mario Bros..

It’s not an isolated moment. On the run through New York City as Gloria the hippo, you spend time weaving between cars. Then you reach a particularly busy junction and the camera pulls up and away, switching to an overhead view, and suddenly Gloria is taking part in a game of Frogger. There are plenty of loading screens between areas in Madagascar, but there isn’t one in switching to Frogger mode, and it helps it to go from just being a nostalgic reference to feeling like a clever reveal about the world you are already in.

The same principle goes for my favourite moment, towards the end of a level where the penguins sneak their way into taking over the ship the animals are all on. It’s not the first level to use stealth mechanics, simplified down to their absolute basic components to focus on the thrill of watching the plan work rather than the achievement of making a plan. It steadily builds an approach of sneaking and using what equipment is around to progress (including some crane game diversions where you pick up sailors and drop them overboard). And so when you reach a point where you have to pass by a guard by moving under cover of a cardboard box, it’s not just an excuse for a Metal Gear Solid reference for the grown-ups in the audience. It’s a completely logical culmination of the world and challenge presented. With a Metal Gear Solid reference which made this grown-up smile a lot.