Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer

You don't need to read reviews for this game because whatever impression you get from the trailer and screenshots is probably right. If PS2-era licensed collectathon platformers with a janky camera and movement are not your jam, you're obviously not going to like this. If you or your kid have an affinity for that sort of thing or you're really in love with the Rudolph IP, you'll have a decent time. For those who aren't completely put off already, here are my impressions: In terms of how it plays, Rudolph's movement options are varied enough and fun to mess around with, although platforming can feel a bit janky at times. That jank, combined with the insane speed and wall jump potential, make me curious about what a speedrun would look like. The camera is exactly what you'd expect if you've ever played a low budget platformer in the 90s-2000s... pretty mediocre. The gameplay loop is mainly just your typical collectation and fetch quest fare. The first few levels feel like large wastelands with very little to do, but the level design gets better as they get more densely packed with collectables, quests and puzzles. However, I must reiterate - these levels are still grotesquely huge. The scale of every level makes Rudolph feel like a toy in Toy Story. This makes some mandatory fetch quests like finding a needle in a haystack. To the game's credit, I never got stuck too long, but some people will have trouble with this. The music is okay. I like that they created new instrumental versions of songs from the Christmas special instead of using generic Christmassy music like the abysmal Rudolph Wii game. The voice acting was also not bad - I was surprised by how good most of the impressions were. Unlike the Wii game, they actually tried to get someone who sounds remotely like Burl Ives, which is always a plus. Story-wise, you know how it goes... it's Rudolph. The main story beats mostly there, except for Hermey's sideplot which is almost completely absent (he kinda just shows up). They also made adjustments to accommodate Clarice coming along for the adventure, probably for the sake of having her playable throughout the story and in multiplayer (which I didn't try). The cutscenes are well-animated for the most part and are enjoyable to watch. I had a good time with this game despite all the faults, but I'll admit I'm a bit biased. I was obsessed with Rudolph as a kid and I grew up on janky platformers, so I'm cutting this game more slack than most sane people probably will. If your taste in games is stupid like mine, you'll love this. If your kids love Rudolph, I'm sure they'd love it too. Otherwise, you can safely skip this game unless you're morbidly curious like I was (in which case, you should probably wait for a deep sale).

Modern day shovelware for a AAA price. I was initially very excited when this game was announced, but after playing it I am incredibly disappointed by its boring gameplay, bad graphics and lack of soul. By far the biggest issue I have with this game is the price - it is insane to charge a retail price of $39.99US for a product like this. It should be half that at *maximum*. I purchased the game at 50% off ($20) and even then I couldn't justify how much I paid for the game. From just over an hour of playing it, I encountered several bugs that made this game frustrating: -Despite being advertised, Remote Play Together does not work. The game was unable to register that there was a second controller. -Various camera glitches/models stretching randomly -Rudolph's "nose" sound effect plays randomly ever 10 or so seconds, even when you're playing as a different character. It's really annoying after a while. Another review put it best, and I feel the same way - it's a cashgrab that leeches off the Rudolph brand. The original 1964 film is one of my favorite pieces of media of all time, and it sucks how the majority of content made for it nowadays is soulless and blatantly just made to make use of the IP. Overall, if this game was closer to $10-15 retail it wouldn't be anywhere near as offensive. If you see it on sale for that price or less, I'd say go for it. Otherwise, save your money and go buy a Hermey action figure on eBay or something.

$15 yes fantastic fun little romp, $40 is outrageous do not buy at this price.

Respectful homage to the source material, and classic platforming and collecting. Very reminiscent of the 32 and 64 bit era of gaming. The camera can get wonky in confined spaces, but personally that adds to the charm for me. Nostalgic and warm, as all seasonal experiences should be.

I probably may be the first one giving a review to this classic story game. I grew up watching the original movie and this game feels like the classic movie. I love it. It runs smooth

[h1]Worse than Coal in your stocking[/h1] Ah Christmas the time of good food,warm jumpers and bad games exploiting the holiday for a quick buck! This time starring a buck! Today we visit the horrors of Rudolph the Rednose Reindeer the game, freshly squelched out onto every possible platform that would choose to accept it (which is like all of them nowadays). The Steam page describes Rudolph the Rednose Reindeer as [i]"A BELOVED HOLIDAY CLASSIC – NOW INTERACTIVE: Immerse yourself in the timeless magic of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer like never before! Step into a vibrant, interactive winter wonderland filled with festive charm, playful exploration, and engaging challenges that bring the beloved holiday tale to life in a whole new way."[/i] Well it certainly is a whole NEW way to experience the holiday tale, I’ll give them that! [i]Get ready for the ultimate Christmas quest—guide Rudolph, spread holiday cheer, and light up the season with festive fun for the whole family [/i] Ultimate Christmas Quest? And only for £35? What a bargain it MUST be good! *He lied* [h2]What the game is[/h2] So let’s not mince (pie) words, I know it, you know it, Game Mill knows it. We all know what this game is, and was always going to be. This game is part of the quintessential genre of the non-gaming gift core. It exists for non-gaming relatives to go gift shopping for their gaming relatives, recognise an IP they have fond memories and then unintentionally inflict the horrors of a cheap licensed mockery onto the usually younger generations. It’s very unlikely a platform like Steam is a key avenue for a game like this. But, Nintendo Switch, Playstation and Xbox. Any platform where an uninformed individuals may be browsing through sets of physical games this game will be on that shelf… tempting, alluring the non-gamer into buying it, and almost always for someone else. [h2]The Story – Whats this? What’s this? There’s plotholes everywhere![/h2] The presentation of Rudolph the Rednosed Reindeer The Game’s story is a mess. Animation limited with characters just vacantly bobbing and swaying as dialogue is said, there’s no cinematography, barely any character locomotion and unique animation is very sparingly used and mostly on Rudolph. However the characters seem to deliver line-reads from the movie, due to the games limited presentation and the fact many plot beats from the movie are skipped over. Creepy laughs emanate seemingly from nowhere to represent reindeers on screen bobbing and swaying but supposedly laughing at Rudolph’s nose, Coach Comet tells the vacant stationary deerlings to come with him and rebukes the equally immobile Rudolph to go away as if the also stationary Rudolph was attempting to follow... it’s awkward! The narrative itself is also bafflingly chopped up and the game wildly jumps through the sections of the story’s plot between shifting dramatically different settings and scenes. Major characters (Clarice, Hermie, Yukon) are introduced by bland generic fetch quests, and then thrust into the games few significant voiced scenes out of nowhere as if scenes missing from the game had still happened, it’s barely coherent. The only way someone could follow the story would be if you watched the movie first and then played the game, which defeats the purpose of this product. You would expect an abridged retelling from a game, but the game still has to be its own comprehensible story that doesn’t require the movie but it doesn’t. This is a terrible way to experience the story. The first three levels level speedruns Rudolph’s birth and Santa rejecting him from the sleigh team based on his nose, Rudolph’s nose being hidden. befriending of Hermie, Clarice and Yukon through generic collectables quests. Rudolph then enters the Reindeer Games Comet asks if you want to go to the “next part of the game” (literally) in an awkward scene where Rudolph’s red nose is revealed. You are are suddenly then with Clarice, Hermie, Yukon on a mountain and decide to slide down a slope to “prove that the misfits are independent” which culminates in a boss fight against The Bumble. I did not miss out any plot beats and no there wasn’t any explanation why the other 3 characters are misfits other than Rudolph. Also when Rudolph firsts meets Hermie the literal thing he says is that he’s a dentist… did they even watch the movie? He wanted to become a dentist, he wasn’t already one and more importantly… WHY WASN’T HE AT ELF PRACTICE?! (The game skips over his character arc) [h2]Gameplay – Holly but not so Jolly[/h2] Old King Coal, a Generous soul would describe this game as a bog standard collectathon platformer and would name some notable names of the genre to contrast it to. But I won’t because comparing it to those would be giving it too much credit. The game is threadbare, you’re almost 95% of the time literally just running and jumping around collecting three things, gold chips, baubles and Jingle Bells. The gold chips are used to buy jingle bells from shops and hints to collect Jingle Bells, Collecting all the baubles in an area gets you a Jingle Bell… an arbitrary number of Jingle Bells are used to gate progression at points. It all revolves around those Bells. Unique sequences like a race against a reindeer, and a boss fight are used sparingly. I was staggered when I received an achievement about “beating The Bumble once” because it just tipped to me that he is likely only enemy in the game! I was right with three increasingly poorly put together boss battles. It’s like the bare minimum to be a game. You have a double jump, a ground stomp, a charge and you can crawl. The controls are loose but it is at least playable. However, it’s all filler no killer, there’s no enemies other than a boss. You are just running around the games few levels collecting endless trinkets and doing incredibly basic platforming and avoid some hazards like water, spinning hammers and rolling snowballs. The worst is that by the Island of Misfit Toys it performs the worst sin of a collectathon can do. It starts to demand that you complete extremely specific objectives. Like playing hide and seek with a train and a plane across what is the biggest level of the game. I nearly 100% completed the level looking for these guys because there’s no hints and you practically have to scour the whole level to find them, you can’t even use the map to find them! It’s just painful. Collecting a number of non-specific collectables across a level is OK, but to hunt for something specific just to progress is just lazy and unfun gameplay. You have to do similar tasks object hunting for 3 other toys in this level and in the final level similar tasks in Santa’s Castle as a final screw the player (thankfully a smaller level). Even as licensed games this go this is skimpy. Something like Bugs Bunny: Lost in Time runs rings around this game in terms of gameplay variety and that’s a middling, mediocre licensed platformer from 1999. This is like if someone’s very rough gamejam game got stretched out into 4 hours of filler and given voice acting. [h2]Graphics[/h2] Oh look what’s this, a fairly decent point! The characters look fairly nice, they kind of do look like the puppets from the movie and I’d be lying if I didn’t say Rudolph looks adorable. [h2]Recommendation[/h2] I like Christmas and I like Rudolph the Movie but I don’t like this. This is a very slapidash product, but for all my griping the developers do deserve credit that it’s not unplayable or broken and towards the end shows brief flashes of potential. It’s just that the final product is sloppy and threadbare and does so very little to justify the comparatively premium price.

I'll recommend this game, but there are a few caveats: - It's pretty much one giant fetch quest. - The camera control is infuriating at times. If you could control camera speed, I'd be singing a different tune. - Buy it on sale. $40 for a game you can beat in three-five hours is almost robbery. I'm happy that I played it, but won't re-install it next Christmas season.

Game feels like an authentic old school collectathon, regardless if they meant it, the "flaws" people are pointing out, actually give the game its charm, if u choose to enjoy it, your absolutely will.

♥♥♥♥ ♥♥♥♥ ♥♥♥♥ ♥♥♥♥ ♥♥♥♥ fuuuucjk this freaking game made me hate my stupid ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ chud elf life. the graohics are Not It. The STory SUCKS!!!QQ!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!They pretend to have big character moments but they dont inclde the you know ACYUALL AETUP?????? HOw am i supposed to give a rats asss about thier friendship when they BARLEY establish it Through the freaking cutscenes?????ANDDDD DONT get me started on the island of misfit touys... ooohhhhhh god........... THIS GAME WAS NOT EVEN WORTH THE 20 DOLLARS GODDDDDD. poor little timmy whos mommy gpt him this stupid ass game for christmass thois year. ohhh god. he will have NO IDEA what to freaking do because this ga,=me doesnt tell you ♥♥♥♥!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!if i was that child. i would cry,.... and i would HATE rudoplh fpr the rest pf my liiiiife....... so yeah. DONGT waste uoyr mpney....... -4/10 I would pour milk on hermey the elf and slam him against the wall. Thank you for reading this review <3

The graphics aren't Right, The camera will have a ceizure from time to time on corners, slippery controlls, and it does not follow the story of the original. WHY IS THIS EVEN A GAME. Waste of $30 USD