GAMES REVIEW – Teen Titans GO! ‘H.I.V.E. Five’

 

Teen Titans was a favorite series of mine growing up with it’s great humor, mixed with dramatic tension and kickass fight scenes. But now we got a new Teen Titans, Teen Titans Go! Which gives the show a much more cartoony edge to it which I’ve been split on since its premiere. However I’m not talking about the actual show today, but its game counterpart Teen Titans GO! H.I.V.E. Five. The basic contextual story is that while the Titans are out at the fair enjoying themselves the H.I.V.E Five drop in to ruin their fun and the game is split into five levels pairing off each titan with a member of the H.I.V.E; Robin vs. See-More, Beast Boy vs. Billy Numberous, Raven vs. Jinx, Starfire vs. Gizmo, and Cyborg vs. Mammoth.

It sure brings back some memories from my first game review for Bubble Blabber, MAD ‘What me Worry?’ Why have I gotten nostalgic like this? Because H.I.V.E. Five is another mini-game series compilation like What Me Worry? Like before I’ll go through them one at a time giving my thoughts on each one specifically and then give me overall score on the game as a package.

Starting off with the leader of the merry band it’s…

ROBIN VS. SEE-MORE

You control Robin’s go-kart with your mouse, right clicking to fire his batarangs (or whatever the robin equivalent is called), as you dodge passing fair patrons and See-mores death-karts and missiles. This is without a doubt the hardest game of the lot. I experimented with the game by playing on both a PC and a MAC and here’s what I found. On both PC and MAC as soon as you get a pixel too close to the edges of the game it will make Robin veer to the top or bottom of the screen, hitting every obstacle in its path. But that’s not the only thing annoying it’s just that the sheer rate the obstacles comes is absurd, giving you very little time to react to the coming dangers. And there are only two energy tokens (the game’s health). The game is just brutally hard but not in a fun way but in a annoying way and this was the one game that I couldn’t complete because of this.

CYBORG VS. MAMMOTH

Use the mouse to move cyborg left and right and click to fire popcorn from hi arm cannon to destroy all the incoming food that mammoth is tossing. This game has a nice steady difficulty curve. Throughout the game different sorts of food with varying movement patterns come flying at cyborg and each one does take a different method to destroy. If you’re playing fairly. Just holding down the mouse and firing endlessly can also easily break the game. While it’s not technically cheating doing this makes the game embarrassingly easy until the final boss fight with Mammoth which us just Mammoth jumps at you and you fire popcorn into his stupid face. A pretty simple shooter with pretty exploitable controls.

STARFIRE VS. GIZMO

This level is your typical side scrolling shooter. Use the mouse to move Starfire, click to fire and hold and click to release a powerful star-bolt. Take everything I said about Robin’s level and convert it to positives because this is like doing Robin’s stage right. There is a clear difficulty curve to the game that allows for the player to have his or her own personal play style. The rate of obstacles is steady enough that you are prepared to dodge and prevail in the way you see fit. And although it still has that bug where if you accidentally fall off the game screen Starfire flies to the top the rate of obstacles allows the player to just get back into the game, without too much danger of hitting the obstacles. Starfire’s level is the hardest and most fun stage for all the right reasons.

RAVEN VS. JINX

Raven’s stage is exactly like Starfire but turned to a vertical shooter and adding a bit of Cyborg’s stage too. The basic controls are as Jinx throws things down towards Raven she grabs them with her powers and smashes them against another toy to destroy them. Continue doing this until you reach the top and continuously throw popcorn at Jinx until she is defeated. Raven’s stage is a cool hybrid of Starfire and Cyborg’s stages, taken the movement from Starfire ad the destruction gameplay from Cyborg. While not as difficult or challenging as either stage it’s still a fun experimental stage that is worth a play.

BEASTBOY VS. BILLY NUMBEROUS

Beast Boy’s stage is the black sheep of the bunch. While every other stage has shooting involved in some capacity, Beast Boy’s is a puzzle platformer. Using the arrow keys for movement this time, Beast Boy navigates the funhouse and switches between his three forms to avoid obstacles and reach the end of each level. There are 5 levels in all, 6 if you count the stage that lasts for only 5 seconds if you transform into a cat immediately, and you must use your three forms human, cat and owl to get through all of them. This is a game that does take a lot of patience to get through. At first glance it might seem like the easiest but it actually provides a refreshing change of pace from the other games with a more intelligent mode of play. While Starfire’s level is my favorite shooter level, Beast Boy’s stage turned out to be my favorite overall.
But after saying all that, what conclusion can I make? Some of the games are fun, some of them can be easily exploited, some have some bugs, and some have some intelligent gameplay behind them. It’s a mixed bag overall, and thankfully you can pick and choose which mini-game you think are actually fun, and ignore the one’s that are not. It’s a solid mini-game compilation overall and if it sounds fun then you should definitely play it.