You could argue the current media landscape’s obsession with crossovers, mash-ups, and hearty stews of intellectual property began with Funko Pop, collectible vinyl figures that have been popular for many years now and are made to resemble just about anything from pop culture–from rockstars and Star Trek villains, to cereal mascots and retired athletes. Before Fortnite became something like a Funko Pop game in its own way, Funko Pop figures were decorating mall stores and collectors’ shelves with fan favorites and deep cuts. In retrospect, it’s surprising we didn’t get a Funko Pop console and PC game until now, though given the state of Funko Fusion, we would have been better off continuing to wait.
Presented in an over-the-(tiny)-shoulder third-person view akin to Lego Star Wars’ latest effort, Funko Fusion similarly has you running around colorful worlds inspired by movies and TV shows you may already enjoy. Whereas the Lego games tend to pull from the tip-top of the popularity stack and adapt things like Marvel and Lord of the Rings, Funko Fusion takes on a fascinatingly strange assortment of series.
The biggest of them, Jurassic World, fits well in that aforementioned top tier. Beyond that, however, you’ll find hub worlds, levels, and characters inspired by unexpected and smaller properties, with the full list of main attractions including Scott Pilgrim, Hot Fuzz, The Thing, Masters of the Universe, The Umbrella Academy, and Battlestar Galactica (the 1978 version). This list reads like the involved IP were all chosen randomly, but in actuality, it’s because they share a common distributor: Universal Studios.
Each world unfolds much like a Lego game. You’ll drop into a 3D level full of objects to smash and bad guys to pummel or shoot at, solving puzzles to advance between the regular attacks from villains. The music and scenery change for each property in fun ways–an early Scott Pilgrim level uses the movie’s soundtrack, for example, which I haven’t heard since it debuted years ago but immediately recognized as being from the Michael Cera-led adaptation. This was an even more exciting feature when I got to The Thing levels, where the silly vinyl statues were made just a bit creepier thanks to the film’s unnerving music amplifying the foreboding nature of the surrounding snowy hellscape. Of course, using the music from each property is to be expected, but while it wasn’t surprising, it was immersive anyway.
Despite wearing its Lego inspiration on its sleeve, Funko Fusion is not really for kids. That’s apparent in a few ways–like The Thing being involved at all, or how Scott Pilgrim’s band, Sex Bob-Omb, is prominently featured in the run of levels set in the Edgar Wright movie’s universe. But it’s more obviously not for younger players in ways that ultimately make it worse, even for its intended audience. Unlike the Lego series, which followed a formula honed over dozens of games across nearly 20 years, Funko Fusion fails to stick to its internal logic when it comes to level and puzzle design, and quickly becomes frustrating and confusing as a result.
The Lego games were famous for their light puzzle elements, which the team at TT Games call “nuzzles,” short for “not puzzles.” Designed to make players stumble only briefly while skillfully pointing them to the solution with on-screen hints like rattling bricks or sparkling terminals, there is an art to how a Lego game level unfolds. An adult-oriented game that adapted the Lego games’ take on puzzles and just made them tougher could have worked, but that’s not what Funko Fusion is, in large part because its levels rarely make visual sense. When I played a portion of Funko Fusion earlier this year, I figured my confusion around some of the game’s puzzle mechanics was due to having missed a tutorial section that would be in the full game and explain away issues I had. As it turns out, no such tutorial exists, which commonly left me confused about how to proceed. Funko Fusion’s level design doesn’t provide enough direction to maintain an enjoyable sense of progress.
This issue is exacerbated by the way Funko Fusion fails to telegraph which parts of its levels are meant for now and which aspects are meant to be revisited on replays after more items or characters have been unlocked. An early level in my playthrough featured yellow arrows painted in front of a locked door. I’d never seen them before, and to that point in my playthrough, I hadn’t noticed anything that was gated off to me. I learned only much later, while playing The Umbrella Academy levels, that a particular character in that world can phase through the wall if they stand on those arrows and perform a dash.
