As one of the first announced new franchises from upstart publisher Gamecock, Mushroom Men: Rise of the Fungi serves as prequel to the console debut of this curios new series. While the Wii title happens well after the DS game, It is nice to have the simultaneous release of both to get the full story of this bizarre new franchise.
Mushroom Men: Rise of the Fungi Lets you pick one of three character types as you emerge as a newly sentient Mushroom, born from the green space dust of a recently crashed comet on the Texas countryside. The premise is certainly strange, but one thing that is easy to appreciate is the funky yet detailed artwork presented throughout the game.
Mushroom Men: Rise of the Fungi plays as a 2D platformer, but the characters and world are entirely 3D, which seems to be a growing trend on the DS. Thankfully the graphics are actually quite good. There are lots of little details sewn into the backgrounds and the color and lighting of the title stands out on the DS. The game also lets you swap which screen your playing on any time during the game. The one drawback to the graphics is that it is a naturally dark game, this can lead to some small confusion about what is and is not part of the level design.
The sound is more of a mixed bag. On one hand the music is suitably weird and appropriate but at the same time there is little variety. Most games tend to switch music up or at least tempo during dramatic events or boss fights. Despite being in different zones, the music will stay the same entirely throughout a chapter. The lack of Dynamic music is a downer especially set against some seriously nice visuals on the DS.
Mushroom Men: Rise of the Fungi has a lot of interesting ideas crammed into a 2D platformer, but comes up with some mixed results. For starters, the jump button is L or R which is beyond odd, especially when you consider that two face buttons go unused. Another problem is that many actions require the use of the touch screen such as scrolling through text and saving. The touch screen is also the only method of using magic or "sporekinesis". This means that if you prefer playing on the top screen, your going to be forced to switch to the bottom screen a lot. A real annoyance the game has is the fall damage. Mushroom Men: Rise of the Fungi is a 2D platformer...with falling damage. That honestly makes no sense, you even recover the damage quickly should you survive a short fall. The game also has stat. building features which can be upgraded by finding green glowing vials. This is kind of a neat feature, but it feels like a bit much when combined with everything else the game has. Another feature is the weapon creation, nearly every enemy drops some random weapon piece. Unlike the Wii version which will automatically tell you and assemble a weapon once you have all the right parts, The DS version requires you to assemble it yourself on the touch screen. The main problem is that if an item is incompatible with another, you will see a big circle with a red band through it when you've selected a piece to combine. Most of the pieces are only meant to work with a small selection of other pieces so its almost needless to make you assemble the weapon yourself. Another problem is the grapple hook. In the Wii version you have a sticky hand that is faitly easy to use. In Rise of the Fungi your grapple hook is used exclusively by the touch screen. The real crux of the device is that its unclear exactly which parts of the scenery it can hook onto. To use the device you have to press and hold its icon on the touch screen and then drag your finger or stylus to the part of the screen you want to latch onto. The screen is almost always zoomed in pretty close on your character so many times you will be sending your grapple hook into the top of the screen hoping it will latch onto something and often times it wont. It is a frustrating endeavor, especially during times when you have to use it.
Mushroom Men: Rise of the Fungi is a nicely presented introduction to the franchise, but ultimately lacks some of the more accessible nature of its console brother. The levels can be a little to long and often require lots of backtracking through the various missions presented in a level. Its sad to see a few bad design choices squander what could have been a more worthy title in this new series of games.
