Funko Fusion Review

Whatever your stance is on the now-ubiquitous franchise-based vinyl toys that are Funko Pop!s, a video game that makes use of the company’s astoundingly far reach into IP from every facet of pop culture, developed by a team comprising former talent from the TT-led LEGO games, should have been an easy slam dunk. I’ll be honest in saying I don’t collect Pops (any more) or particularly care for how emblematic they’ve become of the current state of consumerism and IP worship, but I adore the LEGO titles and had a decent amount of faith in 10:10 Games to at least recreate something close to that success. Unfortunately, the harsh reality is that Funko Fusion is as cheap-feeling and creatively bankrupt as the toys themselves.

The basic setup here, in case you need it, is that Freddy Funko’s evil nemesis/alter ego/I couldn’t even tell you who the first guy is, Eddy Funko, is attempting to take over the Wonder Worlds – the various realms across which Funko’s empire of IP exists – so now it’s up to you, the player, to traverse at least seven of them and collect enough Crowns to stop him. Or something. Essentially, it’s an excuse to send you on a tour of a series of worlds based on franchises you know and (hopefully) love, like Jurassic World, Battlestar Galactica, The Thing or Hot Fuzz. And for a game like this, that’s pretty much all you need.

The Scott Pilgrim world is definitely one of the better ones.

Tonally though, it’s all over the shop. Even with full awareness that a not-insignificant portion of the customer base for Funko’s products are adults finding joy in nostalgia for their favourite franchises, there’s an incredibly awkward clash here between these “mature” licenses (which also include smaller levels based on the likes of Invincible, Nope and Shaun of the Dead), frequent violence and shooter mechanics, and the cartoonish presentation tied to simplistic gameplay. There’s definitely a world where this marriage of unsophisticated game design and cheap, referential humour might have worked, but like Ricky Gervais and Breaking Benjamin, some things are best left in the 2000s.

The worst offence is simply that the IP that is here has the unfortunate position of being imprisoned in a game that’s as generic and unimaginative as they come. A lot of the marketing spin leading up to Funko Fusion’s release touted 10:10’s fandom credentials and love for the properties that it’s put into the game. After slogging my way through the entirety of it, I can only assume that the team’s favourite parts of every one of these franchises were all the winding corridors and empty streets – because that’s where you’ll spend most of your time in each of the worlds.

As is Masters of the Universe

It’s strange, bewildering, and borderline impressive that a game could feel so hard up for charm and, and at the same time, do a parody of the arcade Super Mario Bros. game that replaces Donkey Kong with a digital representation of a vinyl figure version of Chris Evans. Somehow though, Funko Fusion manages to do less with its IP in a modern, pseudo-realistic visual style than the LEGO games did in their brick-based forms. With some rare exceptions, every environment just feels like a mish-mash of bits that kind of look like the source material but with little understanding of what makes each franchise special beyond the surface level.

Most levels and encounters in Funko Fusion follow the same exact formula. You’ll enter an area, look for a series of arbitrary objects while under duress of constant attack from infinitely-spawning enemies, earn yourself the key (sorry, the “Funkey”) to the exit and move onto the next, identically-formatted stage, perhaps with a slightly different take on the “puzzles” you’ve already done in the other worlds. Even the various gadgets that you’ll get access to as you make your way through the major IP levels aren’t enough to break up this monotony. It’s almost always simply a case of going and spending your collected currency at a conveniently-located machine, grabbing the specific thing that goes in the specific spot and patting yourself on the back for taking a hint. These devices do add some replayability in that you’ll need to bring them to other worlds to progress areas you couldn’t the first time around, but whether or not you’ll actually want to revisit anything after beating the game is another argument entirely – I certainly didn’t.

So many things here feel poorly thought-out or rushed, especially the level design. There’s no logic to any of the layouts or where things are placed, making getting lost among the boxy rooms full of repeated assets all too easy. The game struggles to even commit to its tired find-the-keycard-to-progress puzzles, quite often just stuffing the required card in a chest right next to the door. Chuck in some of the most boring third-person-shooter combat imaginable with very little mechanical differentiation between playable characters or enemies, then make it happen way too often and for too long, and you’ve got the recipe for Funko Fusion’s grueling campaign.

This about sums up the Jurassic World bits

And for all the complaints I have about wasted potential, bad design, and an overall lack of fun – it actually gets worse. Despite being granted review access after the game had already launched, and despite seeing multiple early updates to the game as I made my way through, the whole thing is a mess of bugs and rough edges. I can say in all sincerity that I wasn’t able to make it through a single one of the 40+ main levels without encountering a progress-hindering, or at least completion-hindering, snag. At best it meant I missed a side objective or collectible of some kind, which is frustrating enough, at worst it meant losing huge chunks of progress as I had to replay levels with none of my progress retained.

In a Jurassic World stage, for example, I was tasked with reaching four raptors and delivering them to a helipad. After finding all four, I then spent another 30-40 minutes running around and completing all of the side content. When it came time to deliver them, one managed to fall through the floor and was lost forever, meaning I couldn’t proceed. In a He-Man chapter, when solving a puzzle involving portals, the game somehow allowed me to activate a portal that belonged to the previous level, stranding me there in a weird No Man’s Land of a dormant environment. In these instances, and many others I experienced, the only recourse is to quit out of the level, giving up any progress you’ve made and collectibles you’ve amassed along the way.

Final Thoughts

Funko Fusion is a mess. What could’ve been a fun series of homages wrapped in a simple, but inoffensive, action platformer has managed to miss the mark on all fronts and then some with worse quality control than an actual Funko Pop. I can absolutely see where 10:10 has chosen to focus its efforts on bringing these IP, or at least the Funko-fied versions of them, to life with the loose collection of references and gimmicks that it’s managed to muster, but it just feels like the studio spent so long putting on the garnish that it forgot to add any sauce.

Reviewed on PS5 // Review code supplied by publisher

Click here for more information on WellPlayed’s review policy and ethics