Adventure Time and Kung Fu Panda Highlight Little Orbit's booth this E3!
It was nearing the end of day three at the Electronics and Entertainment Expo and I had scheduled an appointment with Little Orbit. Little Orbit was showcasing popular franchises in the popular culture universe but there were two that really caught my eye. They were Adventure Time: Finn and Jake Investigations and Kung Fu Panda: Showdown of Legendary Legends. Little Orbit always does a good job with the Adventure Time franchise as well as DreamWorks properties so I wasn’t expecting anything less.
I had seen the last Adventure Time game, Secret of the Nameless Kingdom, at E3 last year, and when I heard there was going to be another Finn and Jake adventure I wanted to check it out. Finn and Jake: Investigations is going to be the first 3D Adventure Time game in the series. Another added bonus is that all the original voice actors from the show are back to voice their characters for the game. The game will play out like your watching an episode of the show so it’s only logical for the characters to be voiced by their actors. Whenever there is text, it will be read in the character’s voice too but that’s just Little Orbit and Vicious Cycle going that extra mile for the fans,
Long story short, Finn and Jake are going to continue the long tradition of their parents of being investigators. The ticker-type, which belonged to their parents, will basically give them advice and it said to help the Candy Kingdom. The game plays like a story-driven adventure game where you can pick things up and use them to your advantage later on, such as paper or rope. You can combine items to create different items like a bottle, soap, and a bubble wand to create a bubble. That’s your way up or an elevator to another area. Only Finn and Jake problem solving is done like that!
Combat will occur and death is not an option. The better you do in battle, the more you’ll get. Of course if you do bad in battle, your spoils won’t be good! You can charge up your Bro-Meter in combat and change Jake’s form to make it easier to fight. In the demo, Finn was wearing Jake like the Jake-Suit to become stronger! All the battles in the game are all part of the story; there aren’t random battles like in RPG games.
Players of all ages will be playing this game and if you get stuck you can use the left shoulder button on the controller and the interact points will activate. It’s more so for the audience that’s not used to the point and click/what to do adventure games. There will be five stories with three acts, all connected in some way, and the Ticker-type is like the map. The Ticker-type will give the player the missions and the chapters. More information was revealed about the fan submitted character, Sunny. Sunny is a collector of Ooo’s infinite treasure’s and you should be on the lookout for him when you’re playing Finn and Jake Investigations. Sunny will have voice acting as well and Little Orbit is working on that with the actor/fan creator at the present time!
Kung Fu Panda: Showdown of Legendary Legends and anything with showdown in the title should let you know that a fighting game is on the horizon. It feels like a Kung Fu Panda fighting game should have been here already but we finally get one and it plays like Super Smash Brothers.
The game has basic fighting-game controls where you can jump, grab, dodge, stuff like that. You also have special attacks that are unique to the specific character you select as well as “Awesome” attacks, where you fill the awesome gage while fighting and then activate them in battle. Showdown of Legendary Legends will have twenty different characters that span all three Kung Fu Panda movies and the TV series on Nick. It will also have Downloadable Content when the third Kung Fu Panda movie hits theaters in January of 2016. There will be online multiplayer and local online only on the Nintendo 3DS.
There will be twelve levels to fight and some of them will have environmental hazards to deal with. The environments and characters look spot on since DreamWorks provided 3D models to Little Orbit. The models are a pretty good interpretation of what they will look like in the upcoming movie.
There are different gameplay modes in the game that will challenge the players. Last man standing is the main gameplay mode so it plays like Super Smash Brothers’ Stock Battles. All you can eat is whoever eats the most dumplings wins! Time battles, whoever gets the most knockouts or whoever stays in this spot wins. These are some interesting gameplay options. King of Inner Peace is whoever wears a crown the longest wins. However, you can’t hit anyone, you can only run away while wearing the crown! It sounds like a weird idea for a fighting game but fits Po perfectly, not wanting to fight!
You can expect Kung Fu Panda: Showdown of Legendary Legends in the fall! Skadoosh!
