Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas: Oogie’s Revenge Review

One of Disney’s more popular releases in the 90’s was Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas. In Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas: Oogie’s Revenge (one of the longest titles of 2005 or this generation for that matter), you play as the lead character in the movie, Jack Skellington. You’re armed with the “soul robber� and the ability to transform into Santa Jack and the Pumpkin King. Oogie returns with his minions after Lock, Shock, and Barrel restitched him while Jack was away testing his new soul robber. When he returns, his girlfriend is missing and he goes out to save her. In the meantime, singing in the background is “This is Halloween� a million times over while you play the game. So while you’re playing the game killing the same enemies over and over, you’ll listen to the same repetitive music over and over.

Oogie’s Revenge has a total of 25 different decently-lengthed levels that you’ll combat through. By killing enemies, you collect their souls of which you can purchase weapons and character upgrades. As you play, you’ll encounter some gameplay styles and tricks like swinging and climbing a tree with your soul robber, as well as pulling tombstones, etc. To the game’s credit, it has some slightly interesting boss fights. The first, in which you fight Oogie, is straightforward enough: you beat him up while he’s walking around singing. The music-based battles offer a convenient advantage as they’ll take enemies down significantly if you press the right buttons. Another boss has you battle a giant spider where you’ll need to hit a weak spot on the arachnid while avoiding its webs.

As far as the gameplay goes, it’s a straightforward action-adventure-platform type game where you eliminate foes ruthlessly and without thought just because the game tells you to. The enemies have little variety and for the most part are brain-dead. For the most part, the only reason you’ll ever die is because of overwhelming force, long-range attacks from which you can’t see and lousy camera angles that contribute to the difficulty with fighting long-range enemies. Unfortunately, everything good about this game is undone by retracing your steps throughout entire levels, confusion as to where to be and a lack of a checkpoint system (save often, my friend).

In conclusion, Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas: Oogie’s Revenge might have a long name, but the gameplay isn’t half as long or close to being deep. At first I thought I was dealing with a half-way decent God of War rip-off (admittedly, it was released before God of War in Japan), but all I was actually dealing with was a crappy God of War wannabe. If Buena Vista is trying to enter the video game market with a respectable action title, Oogie’s Revenge isn’t it.