Shrek 2

Most film tie-ins of the era handed you one hero and a jump button. Luxoflux went a different way in 2004: a party of four fairy-tale misfits walking the level together, one under your control and the rest trailing behind, swapped at the tap of a button whenever the terrain demanded someone else. Shrek shoulders the heavy crates. Donkey kicks. The Gingerbread Man squeezes into gaps nobody else fits through. It is a design borrowed more from co-op dungeon crawlers than from platformers, and it gives the game a rhythm that has more thought in it than the licence suggested it would.

The levels loosely track the film's shape without being slavish about it — the road to Far Far Away, the Fairy Godmother's operation, a set of interiors and courtyards populated by things to punch and small tasks to clear. Combat is simple, a few strikes and a special move per character, and it never asks much of you. The interest sits in the sidequests scattered through each stage, the little fetch-and-fix errands that pay out coins and unlock extra characters and multiplayer games. That reward loop was clearly built for children who would replay a level rather than march straight through it.

What holds up best is the drop-in cooperative play. A second, third or fourth player can pick up a controller mid-level and simply become one of the AI followers, which was a generous and unusually well-judged decision for a kids' licence. Four people sharing a screen in a chunky, brightly lit fairy-tale set piece is still a workable afternoon.

What has aged is everything technical. The camera fights you in tight rooms, the AI companions get stuck on geometry, and the character-swap that carries the whole design can feel like fumbling through a menu when you need it fast. The visuals were serviceable in 2004 and are plainly a licensed budget in hindsight, all flat lighting and stiff faces borrowed from a film that looked far better on a cinema screen.

Still, this is the tie-in that bothered. Someone on the team asked what a Shrek game should actually do with an ensemble cast, and answered it with a mechanic instead of a cutscene, which is more than most movie games of the generation managed.