The Nightmare Before Christmas: Oogie's Revenge (Review)

It's somewhat interesting how The Nightmare Before Christmas became a mega-cult hit in America roughly over a decade after it's initial release. Now-a-days its the go to franchise for the emo/goth crowd and the movie itself has become a lot more noteworthy to casual audiences. I've only seen the film twice before, largely due to the interest from the film's inclusion in the Kingdom Hearts series. In Japan, the fandom of the movie never really died down so it comes to no big surprise that Capcom decided to make a game based off of it. The game acts as a sequel taking place one year after the events of the movie. Jack, still longing after something different, decides to go out in search of new scares again. Before departure, Dr. Finklestein gives Jack the Soul Robber, a gooey whip that can stretch out and change shape. But, when Jack returns to Halloween Town, he finds that the towns changed for the worse. While absent, Lock, Shock and Barrel have sewn Jack's nemesis Oogie Boogie together again and he is lusting for revenge(as you can tell from the game's title). The story and writting is pretty stale and bare-bones, but it is at least tolerable due to the admirable voice acting. A few of the the original VAs returned, Chris Saradon is Jack, Ken Page is Oogie Boogie, and the characters who have new voices are quite similar to the originals.

The game is a modified version of Capcom's own Devil May Cry series and the game doesn't do much to hide this. Like DMC, the levels are presented as a series of chapters, each of which is relatively short consisting nothing more than killing a horde enemies and maybe fighting a boss. There's a version of DMC's “Style Ranking”, where constant attack combos result in a “coolness title” that will increase upon scoring more and more hits on opponents. And at the end of each level, the game tallies up how well you did in four categories (damage, time, surprise, and max combo), then assigns an overall ranking. It doesn't do any of this as well as Devil May Cry, but it did it well enough to ensure I was at least mildly entertained til the end. The thing that really sticks out for the game are the Boss Battles which act as musical numbers...of course, what would Nightmare Before Christmas be without some singing and dancing? The songs are modified versions of songs from the film (only one song is brand new) and during the fight you collect notes as you hit the boss, grab enough and everyone will start dancing while you press onscreen buttons to inflict massive damage. The songs and dancing sequences are the only part of the game I really like and helped the game stand on it's own a little better. Mega-fans of the movie will get a lot more mileage with this game than most people. The game is solidly put together despite most of it being copy and pasted from others and it applies the Nightmare Before Christmas brand pretty well. It's just an overall good game.