Minority Report Review

The combat is repetitive as far as technique goes as well. While collecting money throughout the levels will allow you to buy new hand-to-hand combos, all the combos are simple three-button-press punch, kick, and guard maneuvers, with some slight variation if you hold the final button instead of tapping. What's worse is that even the most expensive combo does only a slight amount of extra damage, making only one really worth knowing for its ability to knock back opponents who are approaching from your flanks or rear. Otherwise, it's easier just to use regular punches and kicks until you can pick up a gun. Well, you can also grab an opponent if no one else is close by to make you drop him and if the game doesn't inexplicably decide to not let you grab. Grabbing an opponent has a few uses: throwing him at someone or, as mentioned before, off something; finishing him off with a seemingly unnecessary number of knees to the midsection and punches to the face; or employing him as a shield against armed opponents, because his friends will ignore the fact that he's between their guns and you and unload with all they have. There's not much AI at all, in fact. All your opponents just move in and hit you, unless they have guns, in which case they will shoot at you at regular intervals without any regard to your range or others. The sole exceptions are the mall security, who have a rushing attack that unfortunately is more often than not performed from offscreen.

All combos are simple three-button-press punch, kick, and guard maneuvers, with some slight variation if you hold the final button instead of tapping. What's worse is that executing a combo does only a slight amount of extra damage.

The only area in which Minority Report really makes good use of its license is in the graphics, though there are plenty of rough areas. On the plus side, they were able to more or less accurately reproduce the effects and look of the concussion gun, the jetpack, the hoverjet, and the spider bots. The game's Precrime HQ is also an excellent reproduction of the movie set. But these are all no doubt the product of assets and techniques previously created for the movie. The game's original content is not as impressive. While level design features architecture and art direction that sufficiently resembles that of the movie, it falls a bit short on realism, especially in the area of lighting. Shadows aren't done properly at all, and it's extremely noticeable in one area where Anderton is standing on a ledge, and his shadow is on the ground below with no other shadow around it. The character animation has similarly glaring flaws, which range from missing key frames between Anderton's normal and guard stances, to close-ups on realistically textured faces that do not animate anywhere except the mouth, to an almost-good rag-doll skeletal animation system with unrealistically loose limbs. It's interesting to watch in action at times, but unless there's some dietary supplement in the future that allows 300-pound mall cops to do the splits, a lot of the time it looks more like a gimmick than something that adds realism.

The only area in which Minority Report really makes good use of its license is in the graphics, though there are plenty of rough areas.

Treyarch tried to add some long-term playability to the game, but its attempts are at best campy and odd and at worst completely uninteresting. Meeting certain goals will unlock alternate skins for John Anderton, including a lizard man, a zombie, and a clown. You can also unlock an arena of pain that pits you against multiple clones of one of the boss characters on a completely flat, nondescript gray floor. Why this wasn't expanded into a multiplayer mode is a bit of a mystery. Regardless, there's no replay value in this game at all.

Minority Report's uneven presentation and its incongruence with the spirit of the movie make it just another bad licensed-property video game. It's not entirely devoid of enjoyable moments, but said enjoyment is fleeting and wholly unrelated to the source material. It's just one of those games where the license plays the part of the cart and the game is the horse, and the developer didn't bother to figure out a way to hitch them in the right order before starting work on the game.