Funko Fusion is full of innovative ideas. A level inspired by The Thing has a strong survival horror vibe, with Funko plastic twisting and melting to form some fun body horror. The Umbrella Academy’s stages are filled with fascinating puzzles that will leave you scratching your head. There’s also a nice homage to Elliot Page hidden in Victor Hargreeves’ portrayal.
You can find various Easter eggs in every corner of each world. John Hammond from Jurassic Park appears in the Jurassic World level. The crossover format will feature characters like Chucky on the Hot Fuzz stage, and David Hasselhoff as Michael Knight (Knight Rider) on the Umbrella Academy stage. This is a game where you want to layer on the cheese, add more pop culture appeal, and have you pointing and laughing at the many quotes.
How much use you get from this game depends on your tolerance for passionate and unabashed fans, and how stupidly you can cover the big cracks in the gameplay.
As a fan of many of the franchises included in Funko Fusion (The Umbrella Academy, The Thing, Scott Pilgrim, Hot Fuzz), I was pretty happy with the selection of these stages. There are seven in total, and you’ll need to step through them all to unlock different abilities and characters.
Playing through almost the entirety of The Umbrella Academy and competing against my friends in the form of Hazel, Cha-Cha, and Funko was pure fun. I enjoyed the challenge of manipulating music to save Victor as the White Violin. Exploring Sparrow Academy and solving its many exploration challenges was equally rewarding.
The reimagining of Hot Fuzz’s Sandford as a bright, cute, but murderous local was both strange and convincing.
Screenshot: GamesHub / 10:10 Games
But Funko Fusion’s biggest flaws became more apparent during the franchises I wasn’t particularly interested in, namely Jurassic World, He-Man, and Battlestar Galactica. Away from the brain-tickling fog of finding Easter eggs and being amused by ridiculous cutscenes, Funko Fusion is a surprisingly beige and relatively unpolished adventure platformer.
In a game like Funko Fusion, there’s a lot you can do with unabashed glee. But it can’t completely hide how oddly fragmented and poorly constructed this game is. If you look closely, you’ll see that almost every aspect of the game is woefully unpolished.
Read: Funko Fusion Preview: Weird, Yet Fascinating
Cutscenes are okay, but they tend to interrupt gameplay like whiplash, bringing the game to a near standstill every time they load. Much of the game’s dialogue has spelling and grammar mistakes, and while it’s not an important part of the gameplay, it does contribute to the problem. A sense of hectic work.
There’s also the issue of the game feeling incredibly disjointed and lacking an overarching narrative that ties everything together nicely. When I played a preview of Funko Fusion before its release, I was confused about the story of the guide, why these pop culture worlds were being fused together, and why these particular adult series were chosen. I was hoping there would be some kind of explanation as to why. Gameplay feels very basic and kid-friendly).
As it turns out, nothing. You start the game by choosing a character to play, and suddenly you find yourself embroiled in a huge battle against an evil being known as Eddie, who is the mirror opposite of Funko’s mascot Freddy. There’s no lore here at all, you’re simply thrown into battle, defeat towering beasts, and enter the first round of the world.
Screenshot: GamesHub / 10:10 Games
It’s not my place to speculate, but I feel like 10:10 Games probably left a few things unfinished with this presentation. You’re left with seven disjointed stages that are adaptations of various pop culture series, with no linking stories or any real clues as to why “Funko Fusion” started. Each stage has five levels and includes different styles of gameplay.
These individual levels are often engaging as standalone experiences. But that’s part of the problem with Funko Fusion. This is a Viking collection of cool, fan-pleasing ideas, and we don’t have the bags to put them in. This journey has extreme highs and lows, as defined by your personal fandom. The high of slaying towering beasts in the Umbrella Academy and the low of stirring up cannon fodder to battle mermen in the Masters of the Universe stage. The elation of fighting the dog Thing in “The Thing,” and the calming low pressure of the Velociraptors in “Jurassic World.”
At the end of the road, I got mixed up nicely into Funko Fusion. It’s a strange yet fascinating game. It’s a lot of fun, but only if you let go of the notion that games need to be “good” rather than “fun.” It’s packed full of clever little ideas, great silliness, and cute homages. They do many things well because they genuinely have a good heart and seem to be in the right place.
But then again, this isn’t a particularly good, well-constructed game, and it feels like a missed opportunity here. First, some levels are downright boring. The other is that it includes a series of franchises that are most confusing for a game that seems to be aimed at younger players in terms of design and humor.
Perhaps the intention is to allow younger players to participate in a more mature series and learn more about the classics in an approachable format. But if that’s the intention, it misses the mark in terms of overt gore and frequent horror tones. If it’s aimed at nostalgic older players, the slapstick humor and lack of genuine difficulty will likely turn them off.
Funko Fusion is a multi-part game, but there are no particularly cohesive parts. However, even after playing to the end, I still had a positive impression. And I had strong feelings about “good” vs. “fun” and what was “good enough” to make a game fun. In a world where games are often taken too seriously, perhaps fun is all that matters.
Once you let go of your inhibitions, Funko Fusion can be a lot of fun. However, like a magic trick, don’t look too closely. Games can be fun without being good, and Funko Fusion fits that description very well.
Three stars: ★★★
funko fusion
Platform: PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S
Developer: 10:10 Games
Publisher: 10:10 Games
Release date: September 13, 2024
Funko Fusion’s PlayStation 5 code was provided by the publisher for the purpose of this review. GamesHub reviews were previously rated out of 5. Rated out of 10 as of July 29, 2024.
