Funko’s remain an ubiquitous part of the shopping landscape, row after row of plastic figures styled after every popular franchise in the world languishing on shelves in every supermarket, toy shop and place of geekdom. Collectable, displayable, and kind of cute in their own way, they also don’t do very much, and their pervasive presence and plastic build mean that they’re edging ever closer to being throwaway tat. Funko Fusion is the company’s attempt to ‘do a Lego’, taking their real-world products and popping them into a video game. These Funkos definitely do something, but whether it’s enough to change people’s mind about them remains to be seen.
The biggest question that arises from playing Funko Fusion is a simple one: who is this really for? It draws together a disparate batch of franchises – Jurassic World, He-Man, Scott Pilgrim, The Umbrella Academy, Battlestar Galactica, The Thing and Hot Fuzz are your starting points – and tasks you with saving this plasticky multiverse from the forces of evil who are set on destroying it. You do that by mostly beating, bashing and shooting your way past a host of enemies, while solving the occasional puzzle, and if the team were hoping to emulate the Lego games, they’ve mostly got it right.
It’s probably little surprise to find this vein of child-friendly action games running through Funko Fusion, as 10:10 Games was founded by former Traveller’s Tales team members Arthur Parsons and Jon Burton. The biggest issue here is that barring Jurassic World, the majority of franchises here are aimed at people in their 30s and 40s, running the gamut of old-school names through to a worrying vein of horror titles like Child’s Play. Hell, it’s not even the most recent Battlestar Galactica (which is already 20 years old), it’s the original 1970s one, which came out before I was born. And I’m old.
All this means that, bizarrely, Funko Fusion is rated 16. It is not for children. But, the only people who have been really excited to play it have been my children – aged 8 and 13 – and predominantly because it has dinosaurs in it. We started with Jurassic World, but the moment I moved onto He-Man – the only other clearly child-friendly franchise here – their interest swiftly waned.
That was probably the right thing to happen, as the scary, slightly vicious streak that also runs through Funko Fusion from the outset had me questioning my parenting choices. The vinyl is melted right off the bones of a cute fox character early on, and that underlying darkness is only enhanced by the arrival of Chucky, M3GAN and characters from The Walking Dead as you head deeper into the plastic depths of Fusion’s worlds.
Again though, Funko Fusion looks like a kids game, and it’s an excellent-looking one at that. The plasticky stars look very much like their real-world counterparts, and each franchise-specific location manages to capture the look, feel and nostalgia of those original titles. The strains of recognisable themes helps as well, but having taken the original Lego route of forgoing dialogue, and relying on slapstick humour – oh look, their head’s come off and now they’re covered in poo! – means that again, this feels like a kids game that’s not for kids.
“But games can just be fun!” a corner of the internet will cry. Yes, they can be fun, and Funko Fusion broadly is. I like a good spot of nostalgia as much as the next guy, and seeing the DeLorean from Back to the Future appear or Masters of the Universe’s Snake Mountain in 3D, made a ton of feelings bubble up to the surface – not least wondering whatever happened to my original Castle Greyskull. It’s light, and fairly inconsequential, but enjoyable nonetheless.
The combat here is straightforward, but when I started out with my review it was actually surprisingly tough. So much so that 10:10 Games has already patched it to make it easier, raising further questions about who they’re targeting. For kids raised on Fortnite and Lego games, there’s little here that will surprise them, but it’s solid and engaging enough as you wonder what the next little Easter Egg will be.
The most criminal exclusion at launch though, is the lack of cooperative multiplayer. It’s coming in updates through October and November for various world, just in time for Christmas, but if ever a game screamed out for playing with friends it’s this one, particularly if they share the same sense of nostalgia for these franchises.