I've never collected Funko Pops, but Funko Fusion still caught my attention. I was intrigued by its bizarre concept of fusing together completely unrelated entertainment franchises into a third-person shooter, and when it became clear that it was inspired by LEGO video games, I was even more on board. But after playing Funko FusionI can say that Funko fans should stick to buying the vinyl figures.
Funko FusionThe weird collection of random IPs seems like a fun idea on paper, but it doesn't work in execution. The list of franchises represented in Funko Fusion ranges from Five Nights at Freddy's TO Giant manrepresented through unlockable characters and playable levels. Seven of the franchises get full worlds where most of the action takes place, though it feels like the IPs chosen to get this extra attention were pulled out of a hat. It's baffling that The Umbrella Academyyears after the height of its popularity and coming off a final season that was almost universally panned, it has five levels dedicated to it while something with greater cultural relevance in 2024, like Invinciblehas only one. And while I love Edgar Wright's fun 2007 action comedy Warm FuzzIt's strange that this one also has five levels instead of Wright's Dawn of the Deadwhich is by far the most popular film.
Even so, it can be fun to find special characters like Chucky from Child's play In Funko Fusionand there's an absurdity to it all that at least makes things fun on a superficial level. The developers clearly have a love for the intellectual property present in Funko Fusionwith clever touches like the Number Five from Umbrella Academy teleporting instead of dodging like the other playable characters in the game. It's also nice to see the worlds of these franchises recreated, and hardcore fans of the IPs will get some entertainment value from exploring certain levels.
But when it comes to actually playing, Funko Fusion is a disaster. Players will quickly forget the messy appeal of seeing random franchises thrown at a dartboard once they get into the trenches and try to play. A typical Funko Fusion level is a mostly open area where players walk around, solve simple puzzles with vague objectives, and shoot lots of Funko Pop enemies. It can be difficult at times to know where to go next or what to do, and the game suffers from being extremely repetitive and buggy. Players won't know if they can't advance the story because they don't understand what to do or the game isn't working properly.
All the franchises present in Funko Fusion
- Back to the Future
- Galactic Battle
- Big boy
- Child's play
- Five Nights at Freddy's
- Funko
- Warm Fuzz
- Invincible
- Jaws
- Jurassic Park
- KFC is a registered trademark.
- Knight
- The Masters of the Universe
- M3GAN
- Giant man
- The Mummy
- No
- Scott Pilgrim vs. the World
- Dawn of the Dead
- Team Fortress 2 (downloadable content)
- The thing
- The Umbrella Academy
- The Walking Dead (DLC)
- Voltron: Legendary Defender
- Xena: Warrior Princess
And even when everything is working well, Funko Fusion objectives can be incredibly boring. Several levels have escort missions, which are rarely fun. One particularly annoying escort mission can be found in a Jurassic World stage where players must escort a gyroball through an area they have already explored in a previous level. Players must keep enemies away from the ball and stay close to it to make it move, but touching the ball causes players to fall. This will happen about a dozen times before players reach the end of the level. Combine this with the extreme lag that the Jurassic World the levels seem to suffer and players will not feel like replaying them.
Unfortunately, the unlock Funko FusionSecret characters and levels often mean replaying previously completed levels, which only adds to the game's repetitiveness. Taking a cue from LEGO playbook, players are encouraged to replay levels using different characters with unique abilities that can then be used to solve puzzles that were impossible to complete in an initial playthrough. In theory, this would give Funko Fusion a high replay value, but since the levels are already so difficult to play, the thought of replaying them leaves a deep sense of dread.
Funko Fusion's boss fights are horrible
Funko FusionThe game's biggest problems are on full display in its atrocious boss fights. Like its levels, Funko Fusion Boss fights are repetitive, buggy, and often take too long. Many bosses rely on a ground-pound attack that sends out a shockwave that players must jump over, and killing them is mostly a matter of shooting weak points or tediously filling a tube with purple slime. Bosses are annoying because they often take too long to expose themselves to damage, and even then, some take so long to kill that players will start to wonder if the game is bugged.
But while Funko FusionThe boss fights are terrible, 10:10 Games has, to its credit, already made some big improvements over how they were when the game first launched. The latest Funko Fusion The update rebalanced some boss fights to make them more tolerable, mostly by eliminating constantly respawning enemies. Before the update, Funko Fusion players not only had to deal with the boss, but in some cases also with an endless barrage of enemies that made it difficult to focus on the fight itself. These enemies would also often interrupt drinking animations, which made healing or activating buffs much more frustrating than necessary. After the update, Funko FusionBoss battles have definitely improved, although the basic design is still lacking.
The final boss fights at the end of Funko Fusion worlds conclude with kaiju-like battles where players don't actually participate and instead watch the action unfold, which is anti-climactic, to say the least. The stories told in each world also suffer from a lack of justifiable payoff, with The Umbrella Academy world is one of the worst offenders. Its first two missions tell the story of Season 1, but Season 2 is mostly skipped, and then the last two levels take place in Season 3. It's impossible to follow or care about. Funko Fusion try to imitate the LEGO the farcical way video games tell stories, but it's a poor imitation.
Funko Fusion
The latest balance update also improved progression, allowing players to unlock new worlds faster and get to the final boss without having to complete all the bonus levels.
From its unfunny scenes to its overall concept, Funko Fusion It often presents itself as an unofficial brand LEGO game. It tries to replicate things like the fun of destroying every object in sight, but it offers something much less satisfying because most of the objects players can hit don't even break. Most of the time they bounce, spin, and shoot little orbs that serve as Funko Fusioncurrency. Players can use the said money on machines scattered throughout the levels to obtain healing items and weapons, as well as generate important items that are needed to pass a certain stage. I think this should be Funko Fusionthe equivalent of buildable objects in LEGO games, but like the other ways Funko Fusion try to copy the LEGO games, it doesn't generate the same excitement.
A distinctive feature of the LEGO games is cooperative support. As you might expect, Funko Fusion Co-op mode was confirmed a long time ago, but at the time of writing it is not yet available in the game. Funko Fusion will have online co-op in October, but having such a major feature not available at launch is a real head-scratching decision. Anyone interested in playing through Funko Fusion they will have already done so by the time co-op mode is active, and the levels won't be fun enough to justify playing again with a friend.
Funko Fusion bungles its interesting concept with poor gameplay, and it's hard to see how co-op could make it more tolerable. That said, the game's latest balance update has It made it at least a little better, so maybe future updates will make a bigger difference than expected.
Funko Fusion is available now for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X, with the Switch and PS4 versions launching on November 15. Game Rant received a PC code for this review.
