Thankfully, I’ve been able to avoid buying too many Funko Pop figures, but over the years I’ve accumulated a few. After all, like virtually every pop culture phenomenon, they exist and more (I have a few of Masters of the Universe and Ronald Reagan on my shelf), so it’s easy to see why they’re so popular.
Now that 10:10 Games has turned Funko Pop figures into a video game, we see a surprisingly wide range of brands to play with, from old hits like Universal’s Classic Monsters to 80s legends like Back to the Future and The Fantastic Car , to more modern phenomena like Nope and M3gan. When the adventure begins, you can choose the series you want to play in and select one of the four characters that belong to it. I decided to start with “Masters of the Universe”, my favorite childhood movie, more specifically “Man at Arms”.
What awaits me is a colorful world and a tutorial level designed to teach me the basics. But anyone with even a passing knowledge of video games will get the hang of it right away. The basic setup is the standard 1A template for third-person action, where you move with the left analog stick and control the camera with the right. The right trigger button lets you fire from the hip, and holding down the left trigger will aim the sights down. The A button is for jumping and the others are used for things like picking things up, while the D-pad is mainly for selecting consumables (more health, for example).
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Although it’s essentially a third-person shooter, Funko Fusion’s gameplay is similar to that of the Lego games. However, the characters are noticeably larger and closer to the camera than in, say, Gears of War. Of course, all Funko characters are unique and move at different speeds, have different weapon types, etc., but the differences are still a bit less than I would have expected and I rarely find a big difference in which one I choose. In the unlikely event that you’re unsatisfied, you can change clothes almost any time during the adventure.
Funko Fusion collects seven worlds that you unlock one by one, but be fore we get that far we meet Freddy Funko, whose factory is attacked by the evil Eddy Funko, who is after his crown. After a battle between the two, the campaign begins, where you must restore Freddy’s crown, which is now destroyed. This is the basic premise, but I think it works very well, as the story is obviously created with a wink and as an excuse to adventure in beloved worlds with equally beloved characters.
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Levels are rarely designed in a traditional way, and as such, don’t necessarily revolve around getting from point A to B, but rather around scenarios. Instead, your goal is to complete special tasks, like surviving the chaos of Jurassic Park or stopping Skeletor from taking over Castle Grayskull. Levels are littered with items to unlock and collect, and they’re absolutely littered with enemies. On top of that, you’ll need to collect Vinyl, a currency that lets you buy upgrades, more lives, and bonus items.
So far, so good, and there are a lot of things I like about Funko Fusion, especially the Cameo Levels and Cameo Missions, which offer a little dose of fan service to further add to the Funko Pop feeling that this is truly a Macedonian brand. The only problem is that it’s not very fun to play.
It lacks a sense of polish and it’s often not entirely clear what you’re supposed to do next. Without really knowing why, I often complete sub-objectives and get a new quest, and sometimes I just run around for a small eternity trying to figure out what I need to do to trigger the sequel while endless enemies spawn in seemingly random places and shoot me aimlessly that I even have the opportunity to see them.
The controller vibrates almost constantly while shots are fired, and those who want to dodge and sneak without getting hit will quickly find, to their frustration, that it’s simply not possible. The game’s controls are too awkward, and if you can’t see the enemy that just appeared at your neck, you won’t see the shot in the back of your head. To heal yourself, you have to drink from a plastic bottle (which you can pawn for extra vinyl, a fun touch). This is done by holding down the X button, but shooting it cancels the animation. The end result is that you can run around unsuccessfully trying to revive yourself, which is frustrating beyond compare.
When you die, you become a ghost and must pay money to be revived, although only a certain number of times before the Game Over screen appears. Unfortunately, there is no co-op mode, although it is in the pipeline, but having someone to play with who could revive me after a death or cover me when I try to use lives would really do wonders for the game. It also doesn’t help that it is plagued with several technical glitches that have caused me to have to restart runs multiple times.
There are also a lot of so-called “doors” to unlock things. Just like in Lego games, you can use pre-made clues to try and find everything, and it’s downright frustrating to get your hands on some plastic figures (KFC legend Colonel Sanders is one of the biggest offenders). If you know you enjoyed unlocking all the Lego figures in Lego games, you’ll enjoy this one too, but I find it to be a pretty boring design and when the basic gameplay doesn’t hold up, it becomes more of a chore than entertainment. .
Overall, it’s hard to escape the feeling that Funko Fusion is more of a beta than a finished game. It’s too loose, without the general glue that holds it together. And none of the various parts are particularly good because they lack polish. I solve problems but don’t know what I’ve done, I use bonus items without knowing what they do, and cutscenes trigger without me really understanding why. And once I do understand what to do, like kill a certain number of animals, it’s mostly monotonously boring.
The best thing about Funko Fusion is the characters included here, from Scott Pilgrim to Marty McFly to Mega Man himself, often with really cool designs and familiar music tracks that induce instant endorphin rushes. But that’s not enough. With more time in the oven and especially in co-op mode, it could have climbed several notches in the rankings, but at the moment it’s difficult to recommend it to anyone who isn’t an unconditional fan of Funko Pop, which begs the question. If not, it’s better to spend the money on other plastic figures for the collection.
