The Grinch (PC / Sega Dreamcast / Sony Playstation) - Part 1 (Whoville)

The story of “How the Grinch stole Christmas“ by Dr. Seuss was unknown to me until I saw the AVGN Christmas special in 2010. It doesn’t seem to be told outside of English speaking countries, at least it is unknown in German speaking countries. I recently acquired this game for my Sega Dreamcast and only wanted to see if it worked. My expectations were rather low not knowing the story at all and looking at some terrible box art, a dumb looking main character and mediocre graphics. all I can say is that I’m glad that I have went past the first impression and gave it a chance. The game was released in the year 2000 as a movie adaptation of the Jim Carrey movie. Back then, it seems he was cast for any role that involves a stupid and slightly retarded character and even though I appreciate that he got a unique style of acting, he’s really not an interesting actor in my opinion. there was a version for the Sega Dreamcast, Sony Playstation as well as the PC. There was also a port for the Game Boy Color, but it was an entirely different game due to hardware restrictions. You are The Grinch who hates Christmas. he lives near Whoville and is sick of all the happiness there so he decides to ruin Christmas by playing some pranks on them and stealing or destroying presents. The game consists of four areas which play like mini open worlds. you can access most parts from the beginning and each area has a list of objectives to complete such as destroying ten snowmen. there are also blueprint parts all over the stage and once completed they allow you to construct a gadget which gives you additional abilities such as climbing or launching rotten eggs. Essentially, the game is a 3D platformer. Once you complete a few objectives, you unlock the next area. some parts of each area are only accessible once you get the right gadget from another zone. since each area is fairly small, the backtracking is not an issue. it also never gets too complex, but it isn’t too trivial either. in my opinion it strikes a good balance and is great for little kids especially since you have unlimited lives and can save any time. The Grinch is not a technical miracle. The graphics are meh. The Dreamcast is capable of so much more, but it may have been due to the fact that the Sony Playstation was less powerful and so these graphics are the lowest common denominator. The graphics are actually much clearer and more crisp, but on youtube it comes out blurry and muddy for whatever reason. While the graphics are nothing to write home about, the music is just awesome. I love it. Also, the narrator does a great job of telling the story. Gameplay handles very well. Switching gadgets is easily done and the game makes good use of all the buttons on the dreamcast controller. There are just a few parts which are really cryptic like in the ice cave where you can’t see the ledge to hang on to and the vehicle controls could have been tweaked. Aside from that, it is a solid and really fun platformer. there are even some bonus games to unlock by getting enough presents, but those suck and could have been left out completely. as far as I know there is no reward for getting all presents so I skipped that. once you have the grinch copter it becomes easy to get those. When I first played it, it looked like it had the depth of a mario party game. You enter Whoville and jump on snowmen and presents... that’s boring. once you get into the post office, however, it starts to show clever game play mechanics and when you get the first gadget, the rotten egg launcher, it becomes an actual game. it’s a pity that the developers didn’t take care to give players a better first impression, but if you give the game a chance, you’ll be rewarded by a fun game based on a touching story.