Name: CGR Undertow - ADVENTURE TIME: EXPLORE THE DUNGEON BECAUSE I DON'T KNOW! review for Nintendo 3DS
Uploaded: 2013-12-16T21:10:46.000Z
Duration: 4 min 28 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

My guess is, there was a meeting. That's where all bad ideas come from. Meetings. Someone

says, "Hey, we need to come up with a new Adventure Time game. That means we need a

retro game genre and a ludicrous subtitle." Some guy with a danish suggests a dungeon

crawler, so they ask him, "Okay, but why would they explore a dungeon?"

There's your genre, your game and your subtitle.

Look, that's how the gears of industry turn, you guys. I'm not making this stuff up. It's

a continuous cycle, of meetings and danishes. Look it up.

Of course, if you've seen our review of the console version...you already know the moral

of the story. This year's Adventure Time game is a lot less awesome than it looks. And you

might think, "Well, it does look pretty awesome, so...even if it's less awesome, that could

still be awesome. At least to some degree." No. I'm here to tell you that's not the case.

Adventure Time: Explore The Dungeon Because I Don't Know! is an old-school dungeon crawler,

with NES-style cutscenes and music, and some kind of magical ice cream cone you can slap

skeletons with. It's like Castlevania with sprinkles. IN A DUNGEON. Yeah, I was on board,

too. And then I found myself doing the same thing, in the same place, to the same enemies,

several hours in. And I realized eating cereal would be more exciting.

At least cereal evolves. From crisp to soggy, and you have those raisins hiding on the bottom

of the bowl, that you only find after you drink the milk...which actually changes in

both temperature and taste throughout the experience.

Raisin bran is, like...f*cking Darwin, compared to this.

Anyway, so there are 100 dungeons, and you get to slash your way through them while collecting

treasure and finding ridiculous new weapons...there's a kitten gun, because when you're being attacked

by birds, why fire anything but kittens? That just makes sense. And so does the idea, frankly.

I love the concept of putting Adventure Time into this kind of game.

The problem is that...there's not much of a game here.

The levels and enemies all feel pretty much the same, and the three attacks you start

the adventure with? Those are the three attacks you'll end it with. And not just because you're

probably gonna quit playing halfway through.

But at least on consoles, that's the only problem this game has. On the 3DS, it's sort

of a different story. Because the polish and the slickness that the Wii U version has?

Not the case here on the 3DS. It doesn't look as good, it doesn't play as good, it doesn't

run as good...it's simply not as good. Which makes this easy. If you want to enjoy what

enjoyable things the game has to offer—and there's actually plenty—go with the console

At least with that one, you get to enjoy what the game does well.

On the 3DS, you just...struggle with hit detection, and lag. And...smallness.

Anyway, for more on the game...check out our review of the Wii U version. Or for a game

that's even more disappointing than that version, go with this one. Maybe you're into that kind

of thing. I don't know. And the game doesn't know, either. What we do know is...shrinking

a console game onto a handheld usually doesn't work that well.

And when the game in question happens to feel shrunk as it is...you get Adventure Time:

Explore The Dungeon Because I Don't Know! for the 3DS.