Everyone either owns a Pop! Funko because they’ve been gifted one or they’re simply just into them, and if you don’t own one then you know someone that does. It’s difficult to resist the desire to own a Pop! Funko is a small collectible that features the small body and large head of one of your favourite characters. For me, it’s a must-have. They’ve never been used for playing like toys, as they specifically state on the boxes, “Not a Toy,” but now, a whole bunch of ex-TT Game developers have gotten together at 10:10 Games to finally make them playable in the brand new game, Funko Fusion.
While the game is being created by developers who have worked on the beloved Lego games, and it’s easy to make comparisons between the two, Funko Fusion is its own thing and sets itself apart from its spiritual successor in many ways. During my first hour of gameplay, I had the mindset that this should play very similarly to the Lego games, and because I had done that, I found myself not enjoying the game as much, but once I had accepted it for what it was and its own thing, I was able to respect the game more and found myself enjoying it at times.
Funko Fusion is an action adventure game developed by 10:10 Games that follows Funko’s mascot Freddy, who gets overpowered by a new rival, Eddy (Clancy Brown), who attempts to take control of all the Wonderworlds. After taking Freddy’s crown, it’s up to the player to retrieve all the pieces of the crown and to take down Eddy for good. Funko Fusion features various worlds that are taken from Universal Pictures, such as Hot Fuzz, Battlestar Galactica, Jurassic World, and so much more.
When starting the game, it allows you to choose the first world you want to play from the seven available worlds: Jurassic World, Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, Hot Fuzz, The Thing, The Umbrella Academy, Masters of the Universe, and Battlestar Galactica. I personally chose Jurassic World as the first world to hop in, and to my surprise, each world had a hub world that was themed after itself with licensed music also playing. It brought back memories to the early days of the Lego games, such as Lego Star Wars: The Videogame, where you would roam around in the cantina and walk into each of the levels. There were five levels for each world, totalling 35 overall levels that you play through before the final boss.
An issue that persists with Funko Fusion is that you’ll find yourself enjoying some worlds more than others, and that could be for the simple fact of the familiarity you have with the IP property. Personally, I didn’t find myself running into that issue; playing levels from The Thing World, a film that I’ve never seen, actually gave me a reason to finally watch that film, as I was interested in the world and the enemies that I fought. What made me dislike this world was the design behind the boss fights and the enemy spawn rate, which was an issue that existed throughout the entire game. Funko Fusion doesn’t give you time to breathe and explore as countless enemies spawn, attacking you and stopping you from doing simple tasks such as healing or just looking for a collectible. At times, it made the game unbearable to play.
Funko Fusion is more of a mature game; it features blood in worlds where you’d expect it to be, meaning it can appear quite violent for a kid, although it is Pop! Funko’s that are getting decapitated. The game plays similarly to video games from the 90s and early 2000s, as it doesn’t hold your hand, telling you where to find items and how to progress through levels most of the time. I found myself in the first level of the Scott Pilgrim world clueless on what to do as I wasn’t yet used to the idea of having to find blueprints to build an amp, which was a necessity to the level and overall world.
Another hiccup that I found while exploring that world is that some worlds would force you to use a specific character throughout the entire world instead of having the free choice of using one of the four characters that they make available to you. This felt like bad game design as I never really got to play Ramona Flowers and was forced to play either Scott Pilgrim or Stephen Stiles as I required the guitar half the time. What would’ve made this situation better was the chance to switch characters without having to return to the Pop! Funko box each time.
The gameplay loop for Funko Fusion can feel repetitive, but mostly during the boss fights, as the actual fights themselves don’t have much except you shooting at them repeatedly until you get enough of the purple goo to spawn in your own massive character to fight whichever giant character Eddy is possessing. These parts are built to make it feel like you have some involvement, but overall, you’re just waiting until the cutscene activates. The moments leading up to these “fights” can be rather fun and engaging, making me wish that the fights themselves were like this. The only boss fight to feel this way was the final fight against Eddy, which I won’t spoil here as it was a great way to keep you on your toes with the unexpected.
What helps sets this game apart from the Lego games is that it’s essentially a third-person shooter, an aspect that I was able to have fun with but also question with certain characters. It was fun running around as He-Man, shooting people with my sword and feeling indestructible, but at times, I would question why Invincible was using a gun and had a weapon.
It works as a comedic effect because his weapon is just a Burger Mart box from the show and his melee weapon being Battle Beast’s mace. They’re nice references to the show but remind me of the Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League issue where characters who don’t usually use guns were found using these weapons. It simply felt odd for certain characters, but overtime it’s something that you can get over the longer you play the game.
The seven worlds aren’t the only IP’s that you can find in Funko Fusion. There are an abundant of collectible in the game that will take countless hours to collect all of them but among the collectibles is what they call Cameo levels and Cameo characters. These levels feature IP’s such as Back to the Future and Invincible where you’ll unlock them in previous levels and play through roughly 30-60 minutes of one level themed after the specific IP. Cameo characters are similar in where you’ll have to challenge a character several times before finally unlocking them. It’s one of the few times within gaming where going after collectibles doesn’t feel like an overall drag and also gives you something new to play with even after the game is over.
Funko Fusion has all the right ideas but needs more time to allow these concepts to flourish and create the perfect Funko game. Although it feels like a spiritual successor to the Lego game, there’s a lot more to it than people will initially think. It’s innovative with how they make you unlock items and explore levels but still fails to make the gameplay loop feel refreshing. It’s the first game from 10:10 Games, from a group of developers new and old; they’ve done an okay job at bringing Pop! Funko’s to life, but with some quality of life improvements, this game might be worth everyone’s time, but at the current state it’s in, it’s worth waiting some time before making a purchase.
Funko Fusion is out now on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S and PC. It releases November 15 on PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch
