Night At The Museum: Battle Of The Smithsonian (NATM2 for short) is based off the movie of the same name and takes a lot of great things from the movie and turns it over to the game. In the end the question has to be asked, is this a game for the hardcore gamer, or just one for the family/casual gamer looking for a fun time. I would have to say it is aimed at the casual/family type myself. A hardcore gamer could possibly run through the entire game and get all the achievements sniffed out in a day. That’s not to say they wont have fun with the title. They actually might.
The game starts you out like the movie, you play Larry Daley of Daley Devices who embarks on a journey to save his friends from being shipped off to the Smithsonian. Like the movie, the game features the voice and likeness (if he got hit in the face with a frying pan) of Ben Stiller. He also seems to be the only returning character, but that’s ok since the family and kids who the game is aimed at don’t really know any of the other actors by name anyways. NATM2 takes you through 14 stages of varying difficulty to retrieve pieces of the tablet of Ahkmenrah to gain powers that transform your flashlight and key-chain (security guard tools for ownage) into helpful and deadly items. The game plays like a typical adventure collection game. You run around the stages trying to gather as much as you can for achievement purposes, as they rarely serve any real gameplay purpose, on your way to the main goal of finding the gold tablet pieces. Meanwhile you will have a boss every now and then which are the characters from the movie, Al Capone, Ivan ‘The Terrible’, and Napoleon.
The game doesn’t stray far from the movie’s plot, which is great to see from a movie-based game for once. Everything in the game with the exception of the cartoon 3D look is great. The controls are fluid and easy to maneuver. The puzzles can be brain busters for a kid’s game, either that or I need to go back to school. The voice acting seems pretty darn good, again for a movie-based game. The title feels extremely underrated as far as a great game for the whole family. If you loved the movie and have a family and are looking for a great game for the kids to play that will also teach them about history this is the game. Or if you’re like me and like a game with some easy achievements, this is also your game.
