Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #4150 in Computer & Video Games
• Brand: ACTIVISION
• Released on: 2007-02-09
• Rating: Universal, suitable for all
• Platform: PlayStation2

Manufacturer's Description
Smash N' Crash through the Shrek universe riding a vehicle with a personality of its own! Play as your favorite Shrek character and pit your racing and combat skills against an assortment of twisted fairy-tale opponents. Grab your mount and bump, crash and slide your way across 12 fairy-tale locations. If you fall behind, don't worry - use magical pick-ups to even the odds or battle your way back by knocking your opponents off their mounts. Beat your friends to the finish line in this fun and funny smash & crash twisted fairy-tale adventure!

Customer Reviews

Fun for age 3+
This is one of the few playstation games that very young children can enjoy and play and there is enough gameplay to keep older players entertained.
The game play is very good, you unlock more and more tracks and characters as the game progresses. Once you have mastered all the tracks you then unlock 'mirror mode' which is funny as you have to retrain your brain to the opposite corners and turns. The characters have different driving styles. Some like Gingy are super fast but hard to control whereas others like Princess Fiona are easier to control but slower to accelerate. There are hidden short cuts which can help you to win the race and hidden levers which open up other short cuts. There are various weapons you can collect along the way to launch at your opponents. These weapons like flying frogs, birds, whirlwinds and rockets are a major part of the game so there is an added skill of collecting and launching these while still trying to win the race.
There is also a 2 player battle mode which is a 2 player head to head of all these weapons in a choice of four locations.
There are tournaments and cup challenges which if you get in the top three unlock different parts of the game. To progress you must master the tracks which may limit the initial gameplay. It is rewarding as the tracks get better and better.
The characters are great with 'Shrek' voices ie Fiona is voiced by Cameron Diaz, Donkey is Eddie Murphy etc and they all hit with their unique hilarious weapons eg Pinocchio uses his nose and the game has great music and humour with the phrases the characters use. My personal favourite is Gingy saying 'I'd like to thank my parents for baking me' when he wins.
My children haven't tired of this game and my 3 year old has mastered the battles and can complete the earlier tracks (although coming last). My 6 year old can place highly in the tracks and beat me in battles fairly and squarely.
Highly recommended although parents may have to open some of the levels to give children more characters and more tracks to play with.

Forget it
I bought two Shrek games on PS2 for Christmas (the other being Shrek the Third) and this one is easily the dud of the pair. My primary school age children very quickly became bored with it, and I'm talking about within 15 minutes max. I tried it myself and soon disliked it - although it's a simple enough racing game around a rather short circuit, my main grief was the poor response time to movement inputs. It was next to impossible to keep control of the 'vehicle' and I found that instantly frustrating as I kept on hitting objects head-on. Every race I tried, and every race my children tried, we finished last and to be honest there was little incentive to get better due to reservations about the quality of the game itself which imho felt hurriedly put together with a tight budget very much in mind. I would advise anyone thinking about getting this game to rent it first, as I now wish in hindsight that I had done.