It’s a year after the movie that we all know and love, Oogie has found a new way to mess with everyone and wants to be the leader of all holidays. We take the role of Jack Skellington, naturally, to fight Oogie and put things right. This is done by exploring Halloween Town and retrieving a set of holiday doors (the peculiar forest with holiday door-fitted trees, remember?). And it all controls a bit like God of War; 3D platforming with semi-fixed camera angles and hack ’n’ slash fighting.
The first thing I noticed was how authentic Halloween Town felt. It was like walking around in the movie – which is just what I wanted for a game like this. All the beloved characters from the movie are present with different tasks for Jack and in the background different songs from the OST are played where they fit.
"It was like walking around in the movie"
No single game mechanic exceeded on its own, but the sheer variation of the gameplay made up for it nicely. Just as I grew tired of exploring for secrets the game threw a rythm based fight at me, only to follow up with a trivia quiz and then play a cutscene that felt like it came right out of the movie. I was never ever bored when playing this game, and while it can’t be praised for anything especially well crafted it delivers a solid bit of entertainment that looks and feels like the source movie. It’s a perfect "casual Halloween game", I’d say. It’s just a shame it didn’t let me explore any other holiday world (except for a brief visit in my favorite place: Christmas Town), it would’ve made the game fit in during other holidays as well and give it a bit more lenght. As it stands, it’s a nice little game to break out at Halloween – but only at Halloween.
