I've never been one to collect Funko Pops, but Funko Fusion still caught my eye. I was intrigued by its bizarre concept of mashing together completely unrelated entertainment franchises into a third-person shooter, and when it became clear that it was inspired by the LEGO video games, I was even more on board. But after playing Funko Fusion, I can say that Funko fans should stick with buying the vinyl figures instead.
Funko Fusion's odd collection of random IP sounds like a fun idea on paper, but it doesn't work in execution. The list of franchises represented in Funko Fusion runs the gamut from Five Nights at Freddy's to Mega Man, represented through unlockable characters and playable stages. Seven of the franchises get full-blown worlds where most of the action takes place, though it's like the IPs chosen to get this greater focus were pulled out of a hat. It's baffling that The Umbrella Academy, years from the height of its popularity and coming off a near-universally panned final season, has five levels dedicated to it while something with more cultural relevancy in 2024, like Invincible, only has one. And while I love Edgar Wright's hilarious 2007 action comedy Hot Fuzz, it's strange that it too has five levels instead of Wright's own Shaun of the Dead, which is easily the more popular film.
Even so, it can be fun to find special characters like Chucky from Child's Play in Funko Fusion, and there is an absurdity to it all that at least makes things entertaining on a surface level. The developers clearly have a love for the IP featured in Funko Fusion, with clever touches like Number Five from Umbrella Academy teleporting instead of dodging like the other playable characters in the game. It's also neat 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 the game, Funko Fusion is a disaster. Players will quickly forget the messy charm of seeing random franchises thrown at a dart board once they're in the trenches and trying to play the game. A typical Funko Fusion level is a mostly open-ended area where players walk around, solve simple puzzles with vague objectives, and shoot a lot of enemy Funko Pops. It can sometimes be confusing to know where to go next or what to do, and the game suffers from being extremely repetitive and buggy. Players won't know whether they can't advance the story because they haven't figured out what to do or because the game isn't working right.
All Franchises Featured in Funko Fusion
- Back to the Future
- Battlestar Galactica
- Big Boy
- Child's Play
- Five Nights at Freddy's
- Funko
- Hot Fuzz
- Invincible
- Jaws
- Jurassic Park
- KFC
- Knight Rider
- Masters of the Universe
- M3GAN
- Mega Man
- The Mummy
- Nope
- Scott Pilgrim vs. The World
- Shaun of the Dead
- Team Fortress 2 (DLC)
- The Thing
- The Umbrella Academy
- The Walking Dead (DLC)
- Voltron: Legendary Defender
- Xena: Warrior Princess
And even when everything works right, Funko Fusion objectives can be incredibly boring. Multiple levels have escort missions, which are rarely fun. One particularly irritating escort mission can be found in a Jurassic World stage where players have to escort a gyroball through an area that they had already explored in a previous level. Players have to keep enemies away from the ball and stay close to it to make it move, but touching the ball knocks players down. This will happen a dozen times or so by the time players reach the end of the level. Combine this with the extreme lag that the Jurassic World levels seem to suffer from, and players will have no desire to replay them.
Unfortunately, unlocking Funko Fusion's secret characters and levels often means replaying already-completed stages, which only exacerbates the game's repetitiveness. Taking a page out of the LEGO game 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 on an initial playthrough. In theory, this would give Funko Fusion a great deal of replay value, but since the levels are already so miserable to play, the thought of replaying them leaves one with a deep sense of dread.
Funko Fusion Boss Fights Are Awful
Funko Fusion'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 way too long. Many of the bosses rely on a ground-pound attack that sends a shockwave out for players to jump over, and in most cases, killing them is a matter of shooting weak points or tediously filling a pipe with purple goo. The bosses are annoying because it often takes too long for them to expose themselves to damage, and even then, it takes so long to kill some of them that players will begin to question if the game is bugged.
But while Funko Fusion's boss fights are terrible, 10:10 Games has, to its credit, already made some big improvements compared to how they were when the game first launched. The latest Funko Fusion update has re-balanced some boss fights to make them more tolerable, mainly by doing away with the constantly respawning enemies. Prior to the update, Funko Fusion players not only had to deal with the boss, but in some cases, an endless barrage of enemies that made it difficult to focus on the fight itself. These enemies would often interrupt drinking animations, too, which made healing or activating buffs far more frustrating than need be. Post-update, Funko Fusion's boss battles are definitely improved, though their core design is still lacking.
The final boss fights at the end of Funko Fusion worlds conclude with kaiju-like battles where players don't really participate and instead watch the action unfold, which is anti-climatic, to say the least. The stories being told in each world also suffer from a lack of proper pay-off, with The Umbrella Academy world being one of the worst offenders. Its first two missions tell the story of Season 1, but Season 2 is mostly skipped, and then the final couple of levels take place in Season 3. It's impossible to follow or care about. Funko Fusion tries to mimic the LEGO games' slapstick way of retelling stories, but it's a poor imitation.
Funko Fusion's latest balance update has also improved progression, making it so players can unlock new worlds faster and get to the final boss without having to complete all the bonus levels.
From its unfunny cutscenes to its general concept, Funko Fusion often comes across as an off-brand LEGO game. It tries to replicate things like the fun of smashing every object in sight, but delivers something way less satisfying because most of the objects players can hit don't even break. Most of the time they bounce, spin, and shoot out little orbs that serve as Funko Fusion's currency. Players can use said money on machines spread throughout the levels to get healing items and weapons, as well as generate important objects that are required to get through any given stage. I think this is supposed to be Funko Fusion's equivalent of the buildable objects in the LEGO games, but like the other ways Funko Fusion tries to copy the LEGO games, it doesn't generate the same excitement.
A defining feature of the LEGO games is co-op support. Predictably, Funko Fusion confirmed co-op long ago, but it's not available in the game as of the time of this writing. Funko Fusion is getting online co-op in October, but to have such a major feature unavailable at launch is truly a head-scratching decision. Anyone interested in playing through Funko Fusion will have already done so by the time co-op is in the game, and the levels are not nearly fun enough to justify playing through them again with a friend.
Funko Fusion fumbles its interesting concept with bottom-of-the-barrel gameplay, and it's hard to see how co-op could make it any more tolerable. That being said, the game's latest balance update has made it at least a little better, and so perhaps future updates will make a bigger difference than expected.
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OpenCritic Reviews
- Top Critic Avg: 53 /100 Critics Rec: 14%
- Released
- September 13, 2024
- ESRB
- e
- Engine
- Unreal Engine 5
- Multiplayer
- Online Co-Op
WHERE TO PLAY
- Developer
- 10:10 Games
- Publisher
- 10:10 Games
- Genre(s)
- Action-Adventure
- The little details show a clear appreciation for the IPs
- Balance update has made the game less frustrating
- Atrocious boss fights
- Repetitive and boring levels
- No co-op at launch
- Severe technical problems all over the place
Funko Fusion is available now for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X with Switch and PS4 versions launching on November 15. The Best War Games was provided with a PC code for this review.