Night at The Museum 2

Night at The Museum 2 – Where history comes alive!

Fans of Ben Stiller’s comedy fantasy action film Night at the Museum 2 will be delighted to see there’s been an effort to capture some of the fantasy fun for the mobile phone.

For those who enjoy solving puzzles through following arrows, interacting with the environment (e.g. flicking switches on and off, picking things up and using objects to progress through the level) will feel right at home in this game. The impressive and detailed graphics are only equalled by the levels themselves. More often than not you will end up reading conversations between Stiller’s character and the various objects around the museum once they come alive. Some of the objects are helpful like the small statue brothers and General Custer, whereas some are there to harm you like Pharaoh Warriors and Napoleonic soldiers.

You will spend a lot of the time being told what you have to do and given helpful hints or even a helping hand from the characters from the film. The screen pans to the objective and you have a chance to see what you have to do to complete the course. Some of the challenges involve just a basic logic, others require a bit of skill – like timing your swing from one moving platform to another.

Along the way you will be able to pick up useful items like a flashlight which you can use as a baton to battle opponents, and grappling hook to leap to different platforms. To switch between the items in your inventory you simply have to press the 0 key. Moving around the screen is easy to use either the d-pad or keypad in the direction and OK or 5 key to activate something or attack. The jumps and slides are all done automatically as long as you move to the right place (marked with arrows).

The game has a nice element where you have to switch between using Stiller’s character and the monkey as they have abilities, strengths and weaknesses. To switch between the two simply press the * key.

As a rule I’ve not become a huge fan of games that follow on from movies as they tend to be rushed out and pretty weak games. However, this is actually a fairly decent effort. True it will leave fans of platform and adventure games a little frustrated by its constant interruptions and conversations and very obvious puzzle elements, but for the younger players this is a really good and fun game. As it is aimed at the younger audience the violence is quite tame and you have no option to make the game harder in the difficulty settings. So all in all it’s worthwhile if you’re a fan of the film, enjoy some humour, like a challenge or just enjoy having something to kill time with.

Rating 82%

Positives

Enjoyable and entertaining

Quite a few different challenges and plenty of levels to explore

Addictive

Negatives

No option to increase the difficulty setting

The constant interruptions although can be quite fun are too frequent

The challenges are quite short and easy