The story follows Flint Lockwood who invents a machine which processes food, however it has an anomaly in that it processes too much food, inevitably making the food take over your town, and you having to stop everyone being surrounded by dangerously hot chili or freezing cold ice lollies. You are given around 5 upgradeable weapons, including forks to grab spaghetti, glue guns and a demolition hand to get through obstacles. Each weapon is given to you automatically throughout the game’s short story progression and you unlock upgrades by playing. You don’t get any control of whether you want to upgrade a weapon, but you do get to choose the weapon.

 

 

The game follows a Shadow Complex sort of camera angle, it isn’t following your character, more like seeing them side on. There are constant explosions of meatballs as well, which send vibrations through your handset and distracts you from gaming. It’s all been worked out quite nicely for a movie tie-in, but the game is very linear. You will very rarely get stuck since the route is only one way, and the clues to get over obstacles are given to you in a joke like fashion eg, excuse the pun, a plate of spaghetti. This simply means the game has a severe lack of replay value, but at least the environments you play in will feel slightly different each time you play, and you can also try and complete the missions in better times.

 

The voiceover kid is very ecstatic, with one of the happiest voices in a move tie in game you will ever have heard. The voiceovers don’t last long and are only implanted into the N64 style cut scenes, but at least they aren’t dire. Music becomes more dramatic as tension unfolds but evidently the track is on a loop and can get quite tiring. Loading screens are also short, so you can get straight to the action without waiting around for ages.

 

There are few problems with the game however because for all it does well, it does so for only a short time. The game is over within 3 hours with as mentioned before, little replay value. Alas there are no online modes and the split screen co-op is mediocre. It is simply just you playing with another person to complete a mission quicker. Also, come Act 3, you will be tired of the game, doing the same thing back and forth with only a tad of imagination between levels. There are a few driving sections to which the vehicle controls do not handle as expected. Half the time you will just find yourself going round in circles, literally. But these are only minor problems since you may not get to them. The game has not one tutorial meaning you have to imagine the controls yourself. While it only took me about 5 minutes to get used to the controls this was based on past FPS experiences, which I’m sure very few children (to which the game is obviously oriented at), will have played.

 

 

What the game should be really is an arcade game. It is built for arcade on so many levels, from its short story experience, to its cartoon graphics. Its fun for a while before it becomes repetitive, and the lack of tutorial could really annoy some gamers.

 

Cloudy isn’t a bad game, in fact in places it is a lot of fun, it’s just that it is quite short with not a lot of replay value, however there are certainly worse games out there.