Funko is a well-known brand of collectible toys based on all kinds of media with characters that will appeal to both children and adults and the potential of this for a game like Funko Fusion is enormous, especially in adventure games with a focus on collectibles, similar to the Lego games, for example. But with all this potential comes many problems that make it difficult for both the player and the streamer to have a more enjoyable experience.

Loyal to the Source Material, but Tiresome Over Time

Something I will praise is how faithful to the media represented here, movies, series and games of which are available here and we have plenty!

From classic cartoons like He-man to games like Megaman and series like The Umbrella Academy, which is curious, because it’s difficult to define which target audience the game would be for, because anyone who sees it from a distance thinks it would be a children’s game because of its appearance, but the game has media focused on adults and, unlike games like Lego, here the Funkos bleed, die, lose body parts among other things that are not recommended for children.

Funko Fusion’s Gameplay is Easy, Fun but Can be Tiring

Regarding its gameplay, it is easy to learn but it tires the player a lot, the puzzles needed to finish the levels, besides being confusing, are not fun to do. Still, there are levels that are genuinely fun to play.

An example was the level from the movie Jaws, where it was fun to do the puzzles and explore the map, but others, like the first one in The Umbrella Academy, are long, confusing and have a nice song initially but because it’s so long and tiring, it’s hard to finish the stage.

Also, a warning for streamers, your live may be muted due to copyright on some songs, as was the case with me, I had to mute the game’s music because I couldn’t listen to it anymore.

Quantity Over Quality in Funko Fusion

We have a lot of characters, but I didn’t even play with half of them, because they aren’t distinct enough and you often have to walk to a box to change the character and sometimes a puzzle needs 2 or even 3 different skills to do so, making it tiring for both the player and the viewer to see the person rotating and changing characters to try to solve something to advance in the stage.

Combat is simple, functional even, you have a basic melee attack and a ranged weapon with 3rd person shoulder view camera gameplay, however the Funkos’ heads are so big that sometimes it’s difficult to aim well, because the camera is so close to the screen when you aim. Characters also have unnecessary weapons and a lack of creativity in keeping all the Funkos with the same gameplay, Omniman with a laser gun, Jurassic World Dinosaurs with 2 pistols? Why not make Omniman have a ranged attack with a sound impact when he claps his hands, or the dinosaurs be too fast so they not to need firearms.

Missing Local Co-op and Room for Performance Improvement

One of the best things about games of this style is that you can play with your friends or family and this was missing in Funko Fusion, something that would help you complete puzzles faster if you had 2 characters at the same time, or even just explore the levels and try to get everything together, currently at the time of this review there is a beta for a cooperative mode on steam, however it is only online, something that is not so interesting, at least for me, games like this are much more fun if played in local mode.

Regarding the game’s performance, it could be better, it works, but the optimization isn’t great, my machine can run very heavy games and Funko Fusion had times when there were frame drops and slowdowns, especially in stages like “Invincible” which has a ton of NPC and enemies. Also I disabled motion blur, it was still active and annoying to play, it shows how bad some of the graphic options can be.

The game is available on Steam in a total of 16 languages, which makes it easier for more players to stream in their native language. The game is not dubbed in any language, the funkos communicate with gestures and text.

STREAMER SCORE

Funko Fusion (PC, PS5, Xbox Series X|S) - 2024

Overall

2.6

Performance
Streamability
Audience Engagement
Replayability

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User Review

0 (0 votes)

Summary

In the end, Funko Fusion has a lot of potential, but it needs to be uncomplicated, with faster and more accessible gameplay, making it fun and rewarding to explore its stages and collect everything in the game.