Upin - Ipin Universe - Game Review

Upin – Ipin Universe – Perhaps any of us had a “tough childhood” with the channel Disney Channel.

At that time, Disney Channel before being “localized” into Disney Channel Asia was full of good sitcoms, Hannah Montana hey, then Suite Life of Zack & Cody, Wizards of Waverly Placeetc

Gradually, the above titles were replaced by “domestic” films from Malaysia and Indonesia, and perhaps the most impressive is still Upin & Ipin But we Vietnamese often call these two boys by the familiar name… U-nang U-x.

But then what else is there to see? So a generation of Vietnamese people grew up with Upin & Ipinthen gradually realized that the adventures of these two 5-year-old twin boys were not so unbearable.

Recently, surprisingly, a “following” game was announced with a relatively “universe” name, which is Upin – Ipin Universe.

So can this game fulfill the task of “transforming” the reluctant movie into spiritual food for millions of Vietnamese children? Let’s find out with Vietgame.asia through the following review!

Table of Contents

YOU WILL HATE

The “nightmare” village

When starting Upin – Ipin Universewe will be shown a beautiful video briefly describing the village Kampung Durian Runtuh (meaning “Durian Fall Village” – NV) of two brothers Upin and Ipin, along with locations in the village.

Immediately after that, the game opens with village chief Tok Dalang asking Upin – Ipin to catch a chicken, and giving control of the twin brothers to the player.

That’s all the game introduces to the world of Upin – Ipin…

There is no character introduction, no brief description of the place that the brothers Upin and Ipin will explore in the game. It seems that the game makers think that all players already know about the world of Upin – Ipin.

Who is Kak Ros? Tok Dalang? Opah? If it weren’t for “10 years of experience”. Upin & Ipin Every afternoon on Disney Channel, the writer will be as warm as a “chicken with hair stuck in his hair”.

The next problem is that the game doesn’t have any real specific mission or purpose. Billed as “an open world game set in the world of Upin & Ipin“, all these twins do is… hang out all day, run around in the tiny village, occasionally fish, play on the swings, slides, etc.

You guys might not like the series Upin & Ipinbut at least those episodes still tell a soulful story. Although it may be good or bad, at least we can still call it an “adventure” of two boys. There is even a feature-length movie title – Geng: The Adventure Begins – actually tells a relatively engaging story, at least for the young minds of children.

But in Upin – Ipin Universethere is basically no “adventure” at all. It seems like the developer thought that “open world” meant that players could do whatever they wanted, so they forgot… failed to create an overall main story line.

But they also forgot that the normal “open world” context would take place in large continents like Final Fantasy XV nice Red Dead Redemption 2at least gives players a feeling of discovery and exploration. And here, the setting is a small village, you can probably walk… 5 minutes from one side of the village to the other, I don’t know if there is anything else to explore.

Therefore, entering this unknown world, the writer does not know what he needs to do, nor does he know what he needs to expect. There is no plot, no goal, the world also… doesn’t care what you do, the game becomes a “walking simulator” when you just walk around looking at the village, watching the neighbors, sometimes talking a few sentences with the villagers and then doing “nonsense” things like growing vegetables, cooking miscellaneous dishes, picking up a few blades of grass… go to sleep!

The setting is a tiny village, you can walk for sure… 5 minutes from one side of the village to the other, I don’t know if there is anything else to explore.

Speaking of interaction with the world, the character’s level of interaction with the world is extremely low. Known as an “open world game” you can hardly affect anything in the village: you can’t break down doors, you can’t kick a rolling ball, even if you take a baseball bat and throw it at an NPC, the baseball bat simply… passes through them, and the NPC doesn’t feel anything.

To the point, the things that the writer “felt” the most impactful were… the wedges (?) lying around on the street, which Upin could pick up and place in another position to climb to a higher place, or ride his bike over to “fly” in the air in a silly way, because that was truly the limit of the fun the writer could think of in this game.

When open Upin – Ipin Universe Up, the writer expected to be immersed in this world, with familiar faces: Kak Ros, Mail, Jarjit, Mei Mei,… joining them in adventures full of childhood flavor, but in return was an empty shell carrying the ghosts of Upin & Ipina “museum” where players can only walk around and look but can’t do anything meaningful.

Thus, the purpose of playing Upin – Ipin Universe What is that? Perhaps the writer is not qualified enough to know…

Technical “disaster”.

Normally when writing a review, the writer will use the phrase “grit”, but for Upin – Ipin Universe Then perhaps the term “disaster” would be more appropriate, when not only is it full of errors, but the game’s minimum technical requirements are still “excellent”.

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Initially, after playing this game for about an hour, the writer felt dizzy, almost nauseous, and had to stop and review the recording to see where the problem was.

The main problem is… the game’s camera, when any movement causes the camera to rotate from the character’s perspective, not from the player’s perspective. Worse yet, when rotating, I don’t know what the developer was thinking but added an “inertia” effect to the camera, causing them to not rotate accurately but have an additional delay before stopping, making it very easy for players to feel… motion sickness when the eye movement does not match the character’s movement. This reminds the writer of the game series Tomb Raider in the 90s, when using the camera also created a similar feeling of dizziness!

This camera system is even worse when Upin – Ipin goes into narrow, dark corners, at this point the camera almost… gives up and spins randomly, not following any path, the player can’t even see where the character is.

There are countless bugs, from NPCs T-posing all over the road, then walking back and forth like zombies, to Tok Dalang constantly… teleporting from one place to another. Then there’s the error of stuck keys, the error of stuck in the control menu, the error of not returning to pre-selection… On average, after 30 minutes of playing the game, the writer has to exit the game and then re-enter because of the error… locking the selection, but oh well, at least the auto-save function still works fine.

The faces of the characters look extremely… lifeless, the eyes have almost no change in the eyelids, but the mouth is always smiling, sometimes looking quite scary like large dolls. The character’s movements are stiff, the character’s turning movements are like logs, like instead of mo-cap (animating movements with actors), the developer decided to manually rotate the character model on the computer.

for Upin – Ipin Universe Perhaps the term “disaster” would be more appropriate, when not only is it full of errors, but the game’s minimum technical requirements are still “excellent”.

Another problem is that the game performance is extremely bad. The game is locked at 30 FPS, but it still drops FPS (frames per second) and stutters continuously, dropping as low as… 5 FPS, and such “micro-stutter” segments contribute to making the writer’s headache even worse!

There is another rather humorous problem: the writer clearly uses a mouse and keyboard, but the instructions are displayed using… a controller, causing the writer to sometimes not know which key to press correctly and is forced to… grope to get it.

“Chief” mission

It must be said that the mission system of Upin – Ipin Universe is… prison can’t be more prison. While roaming around in their village, the two boys will encounter “quests” assigned by the villagers, most of which are basically “fetch quests” – you have to pick up 10 items and give them back to people, or more complicated, there is an additional step… plant 10 tomato plants, wait a few days and then… give 10 tomatoes to people.

Price does not match quality!

With a game like the one described above, it’s surprising Upin – Ipin Universe sold for… more than 1 million VND, while in the West it will be 40 USD.

For easy comparison, instead of spending 1 million VND, you can buy the following “blockbuster” games:

Not to mention discounts, Summer Sale “festivals”, etc. Maybe, if Upin – Ipin Universe If sold at an “indie” price, the writer will look at the game with a different mindset, but if the publisher is determined to sell a product with performance… inferior to a student project, but still sells it at a AAA game price, it will certainly encounter a lot of criticism from players!

If the publisher is determined to sell a product with performance… lower than that of a student project, but still sells it at a AAA game price, it will certainly face a lot of criticism from players.

YOU WILL LIKE

There are still memories…

Anyway, it must be admitted that the village of Kampung Durian Runtuh is made quite closely to the original, the familiar scenes are still there: Upin & Ipin’s house, Tok Dalang’s house, kindergarten (each… can’t enter).

In fact, if we ignore the “hollowness”, the village is actually quite beautiful, but this beauty is probably just a cover of “paint” to cover up the rotten “wood” inside.

Another quite commendable point is that the dubbing is relatively close to the original, the voices of Upin and Ipin are still the same as ever, and legendary sayings such as Ipin’s “tru chu residence” or Mei Mei’s “whoever is a poo, who is a poo” by Mei Mei are also included, which is also a pretty good part of childhood nostalgia.