0 to Z of Playstation 1 Games - Animorphs Shattered Reality

        

Animorphs Shattered Reality is a single player action platformer based on the Animorphs book series by K A Applegate the game was developed by SingleTrac and published by Infogrames for the Playstation and released exclusively in North America on the 6^th of September 2000 the game would be the last made by SingleTrac who closed down the same year.

During the course of the game the player will take control of the various members of the Animorph crew leading them through various environment such as forest, swamps, factories, subway tunnels and spacecraft in search of the crystal shards. The game is a platformer so plenty of platforming in the game during the course of this the player will be collecting crystal pieces and coins as well as battling aliens.

When battling Aliens the player character will automatically morph into a specific animal for each playable character a few of the levels are more of a 3^rd person race where the player will be in control of a dolphin, dragonfly, bat or hawk while negotiating a dangerous path. The game also features a battle mode where the player can face off against evil new enemies plus classic Animorph foes

Earth has been secretly conquered by a race known as the Yeerks a parasitic slug like life form that burrows into a host through their ear and latches on to the brain to gain complete control of the host. The only thing standing in their way is the Animorphs a group of kids capable of morphing into any animal they can touch.

The leader of the Yeerks invasion Visser 3 has come up with a place to cement their domination over the human race, a device called the Continuum Crystal with it Visser 3 plans to manipulate the space time continuum to change the reality and make the Yeerks the supreme rules of Earth. Things don’t go to plan for Visser however the crystal shatters and scatter it is up to the Animorphs to recover these pieces of shattered crystal to prevent Visser from achieving is evil plans.

Not a huge number of reviews for the game are available the five that are available range from average of pretty poor, starting with the best which comes from PSX Nation who scored the game a 68/100 who had more fun with the game than they though with their review saying the morphing into animals was underused throughout the game.

All Game Guide were the next highest scoring review and the only other review that scored the game as average with their 60/100 score, things take a nose dive from here with IGN up next who scored the game a lowly 35/100 their review saying. I'm a big platformer fan, be it 2D or 3D, I'll play it. This is one of the first platformers in a long time that I did not enjoy playing at all. A game hasn't bored me this much since Blasto. The only thing that was any fun was the dolphin sequence, I could slam into that tuna net all day!

GameSpot were critical of the game not catering to a mature audience which seems weird seeing as the Animorphs series seems aimed at kids especially seeing as the tv show was on Nickelodeon they gave the game a lowly 35/100 as well.

The bottom of the barrel comes from Daily Radar though who scored the game a dismal 25/100 and had the follow to say Animorphs: Shattered Reality is a textbook example of how to cram a license into a badly conceived game and create a lousy product. Animorphs fans will be turned off by the weak implementation of the license, while game fans will be turned off by the dreadful gameplay.

This is the part of 0 to Z where is visit four online retailers and see what the availability of the title is, and what price you would be looking at if you wanted to pick this title up, the sites that I will be using for this are Amazon.com, eStarland.com, retrogames.co.uk and Gamedude.com I know the last one is very location specific, but from a podcast I listen to, I’ve heard they have a huge stock of older games, Ebay has now been dropped unless the game is unavailable at other retailers.

So lets get down to business with Gamedude If you are looking to trade in your copy of Animorphs Shattered Reality to Gamedude don’t expect much for it with them offering just 5 cents for a copy, if on the other hand you are in the market for a copy it will only set you back $2 for a copy.

Retrogames.co.uk unsurprisingly don’t stock this North American only title so we quickly move on to eStarland.com who have the game listed but are currently out of stock, normally a used copy is priced at between $5.23 and $9.50, if you are looking to trade in your copy eStarland will pay $3.50 for a copy.

Moving on to Amazon.com where the cheapest copies of this game are incomplete either missing the case, manual or covers the cheapest that is on offer for a complete copy of the game is $10.03 once you add in the shipping costs this is for a good condition copy.

If you are looking for a better quality complete used copy you will be looking at a minimum of $11 with prices reaching up to $27 which is past the price of a brand new copy of the game with prices for a new copy starting around the $21 mark.

Written by

P J Gibbon