Level Up: Lilo & Stitch

Ok, I just got to admit this right away: I love Lilo & Stitch. This is one of those Disney movies that manage to avoid most of its tropes and yet still be great: it’s not fantasy based, there’s no princess, there’s no big musical number, etc… Really the story becomes about two of the oddest best friends who find each other. As someone who was often the “weird” one in school growing up in school with an unconventional family, I can also sympathize with what Lilo is feeling at the start of the movie. Beyond that, we’re dealing with space aliens for a good amount of the run time, which is cool and makes for some damn fine action scenes. It’s really the kind of movie that I think has a little something for everyone and I still enjoy watching it every time.  If you haven’t seen it already, please check it out. So yeah… Um… what was my point again? … RIGHT! Lilo & Stitch for the Game Boy Advance.

The game takes place sometime after the movie. Lilo and Stitch are playing one day when suddenly aliens come and kidnap Lilo *for no particular reason*. Stitch then grabs 4 guns out of apparently nowhere and faces off against what I call the “Space otters”. Ok, I joke about it, but I really like alien designs in this game, as it looks like something we might have seen in the movie.

The first level has you playing as Stitch to shoot aliens. At this point, you might think that the whole game is going to be something like Contra. Surprisingly, in the next level, you play as Lilo, which plays out more like a puzzle adventure. She can’t fight enemies so you’ll have to tactically avoid them and instead focus on triggering the correct sequence of events to go on. You’d think this would be a harsh change, but these two styles complement each other. First off, Lilo still controls much the same way as Stitch, so it doesn’t feel like two different games. Furthermore, it shows how different Lilo and Stitch are, which was kind of a theme from the movie, but they still manage to find a solution and be together.

However, it wouldn’t surprise me if you never get to see Lilo’s stages during a play test. The game starts out difficult, especially for something seen as a children’s cartoon. The game doesn’t really seem to get harder once you get used to it though, and the number of levels is pathetically small. You’ll probably have trouble simply getting started with this game and then you’ll breeze right through it (however to me, that was just motivation to play it again right away).

Graphically speaking, this game is gorgeous! You’d half expect flat looking characters with really thick outlines, but the colors are all well-chosen, the details perfectly handled and they’re all fantastically drawn, though perhaps a bit small. The animations are really smooth, but they don’t take up more time than is needed, so it doesn’t hinder the game play. As a matter of fact, the only animations I would have a problem with are the movie clips used, as the downgrade is really noticeable and distracting. The cut scenes between the levels aren’t good either, as they’re just still images with text. It’s not terrible, I know a lot of games do this, but for the effort put into getting movie clips in the game, there could have been some put into the cut scenes (though they are still gorgeous).

The sounds in this game though aren’t good. Again, the quality from the movie rips is noticeably lowered, seeming to clip when I listened to it. The sound effects are passable for the most time, but poorly chosen quite often; a lot of hard click or pop when the sound should be something smoother. But the real fail is the music. You’d expect either something that gets you pumped and ready for action, or something really up-beat and ready to have fun. However, the main track of the game (for example) seems to be a Hawaiian inspired number (which is appropriate) but it’s really more relaxing that anything else, which NOT what this game is (with its difficulty). This continues for most of the game.

Lilo and Stitch is a game that really surprised me, as I did not expect it to be this good. Of course, I bought it thinking that it would be passable, but when you deal with licensed movie games you tend to set your expectations low. When I managed to really get started with the game, I found myself praising Digital Eclipse and Disney Interactive for putting a bit of creativity in the game play and not just making a run and gun shooter. That’s not to say I can overlook the game’s glaring flaws though: it is difficult considering the target audience, the music is very ill-fitting, you could change Lilo and Stitch to original characters and NOTHING is affected and the game is way too short. This prevents me from giving the game a great score like I wanted, but with its fun game play mix, smooth controls and beautiful graphics, I still highly recommend it. I give Lilo and Stitch for the Game Boy Advance 7 levels out of 10.