Funko Fusion review — This is not the game you were hoping for

It’s undeniable the impact that Funko Pops have had on pop culture. Step into almost any store and you’re bound to run into at least a few, if not an entire wall, of the cute fandom-based figurines. Considering how embedded into our culture these mini-figures are, I’m surprised that it has taken this long to put out a proper Funko based game. But now that it is finally here, is it any good?

The answer is a resounding…meh. It has its moments, though they are few and far between, but I was frustrated more than anything during my playthrough. Despite the abundance of playable characters and worlds to explore, there’s just not much going on. The core gameplay is repetitive, the levels are long and confusing and require far too much backtracking; the bosses are frustrating, the gunplay and movement is clunky, there are far too many level breaking bugs, and it’s hard to shake the fact that this whole formula has already been done, and much better, by LEGO. 

There isn’t much of a story, but honestly, did you expect there to be? Essentially, Freddy Funko, who I suppose is the leader of the Funkos, is attacked by Eddy Funko. Badly hurt, Freddy is placed into intensive care to recover while Eddy goes about hiding crowns throughout seven Funko worlds. To restore Freddy and destroy Eddy, you need to collect all the hidden crowns and figure out Eddy’s weakness. The story is sufficient, and provides you a viable reason for jumping between these incredibly different worlds, but never becomes anything you get invested in. 

After the introduction, you are free to jump into whichever world you’d like to explore. World design is the one area where Funko Fusion shines, as each world is filled to the brim with easter eggs, funny moments, and throwbacks to fan-favorite scenes. Each world is distinct and adds in new challenges and gameplay abilities, all while looking surprisingly great. There are five levels per world, with the last level functioning as an elaborate boss battle. The base worlds which you must complete to beat the game are: Hot Fuzz, The Thing, Jurassic World, Battlestar Galactica, Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World, The Umbrella Academy, and Masters of the Universe, though there are a ton of cameo quests and worlds to discover which unlock additional levels and characters.

Unfortunately, the world’s looking good doesn’t equate to fun and nearly every level is a slog to get through. Not only is each level arbitrarily long, often forcing you to complete a list of menial tasks while dealing with waves of enemies, there’s also entirely too much backtracking due to the dull puzzle-type layout of the levels. It feels as if Funko Fusion actively fights against the player having fun. There’s rarely more than one way to complete an objective, and if you happen to somehow circumvent the intended path or even accidentally do something slightly out of order, the game straight up breaks, forcing you to restart. The amount of hours I wasted due to level-breaking bugs was atrocious. 

Don’t even get me started on the escort missions. In the best of games, escort missions are rarely fun, and Funko Fusion decides to throw these at you at least once per world and centers entire levels around it. You’ll have to find multiple dinosaurs, huskies, and occasionally people and have them follow you one-by-one to a safe area, often with the AI getting stuck in random places and forcing you to either restart the level or literally beat them with strong attacks until they find their way back to the right path. There’s also a few levels where you must protect people or vehicles while being attacked by waves of enemies and solving puzzles which are just as frustrating. Not one of these levels justifies its existence, and none of them are enjoyable, aside from the first few minutes of an Umbrella Academy level in which you must make Luthur dance, but even that grows tiresome quickly. 

The mind-numbingly frustrating level design may have been saved if the combat was fun, but instead it is clunky and slow, with your weapon constantly running out of ammo and needing to recharge while you are face-to-face with a swarm of enemies. You are able to acquire a slew of cool weapons, but swapping between weapons doing combat is painfully slow, and if you attempt to melee or pick anything up while using a special weapon then you revert back to your main weapon instead, forcing you to repeat the process. Same goes for drinking sodas, which can regain your health, turn you invisible, up your strength, or even offer you unlimited ammo for a short period. During combat, you must thumb through your items, choose the item you want to use, press up to equip it, then hold in a button to drink it which often takes a few seconds during which you are vulnerable to attack. If you are attacked while drinking a soda, then guess what? Yep – you start the whole painful process all over again. You quickly learn to stick to your main weapons rather than experiment, which is unfortunate.

As you explore levels, you will find various chests, some with crowns, some filled with weapons and sodas, and others filled with blueprints which will allow you to construct – or mold as the game calls it – new items. When you find these blueprints, you must carry them back to the red, green, and blue vending machines scattered throughout the level. These vending machines are used to mold items during your playthrough, with the green machine allowing you to mold health and other powerups, the red machine molds weapons, and the blue machine molds gear. It is an interesting system which works within the confines of the game, though backtracking to find a machine whenever you find a new blueprint or need a specific item quickly grows boring.

Boss fights are another issue entirely, with many unable to be damaged by traditional means, forcing you to complete multiple tasks to weaken the boss’s defenses before finally being able to hurt them and eventually call upon a special fighter to fight alongside you. Again, bugs rear their ugly head here, as on many occasions the bosses got caught on various objects and, since they couldn’t be hurt by traditional weapons, there was no way to progress, making an already frustrating encounter worse. I’m not sure I encountered even one boss fight that wasn’t plagued with issues or that was the least bit fun.

The main draw for this game is bound to be the wide range of characters you can play as, and it is admittedly cool seeing many of these characters come to life, but rarely does it make any difference which character you select. All characters are stuck being able to only melee and shoot, though each has a different weapon, with only a few characters having any unique abilities like the use of a shield or Number Five’s ability to blink through walls. For all intents and purposes, each character plays exactly the same. The only world I recall ever needing to swap characters for any reason was The Umbrella Academy, as you sometimes need to “rumor” your way into an area as Allison to progress. Your first time through a world you are only given the choice to play as one of four characters related to that world, but you are able to swap between characters as much as you want via Funko boxes located nearly everywhere. Later you can replay levels with characters unlocked from other levels, allowing you to unlock new areas and crowns, which is necessary to 100% the game.

A game like this practically begs for a co-op mode, but as of this writing, Funko Fusion is single player only, with plans to implement co-op on a world-by-world basis starting in October. The lack of couch co-op, a feature which helped define the LEGO games, and the lack of online co-op at launch is baffling and I worry that by the time it is implemented, most players will have moved on. This is unfortunate, as I do feel that this game will become far more playable once co-op is implemented, as it will remove some of the frustration that stems from constantly multi-tasking and instead can allow players to take on specific roles. Once the multiplayer is released I plan to jump back into the game to check it out and I hope to have a better experience.

As it stands, Funko Fusion is a great idea with bad implementation. With so many worlds and characters to draw from, it’s a shame that this property is bogged down by frustrating level design, clunky movement and shooting, mundane objectives, and far too many bugs. Co-op may salvage Funko Fusion in the future, but for now it is hard to recommend to any but the most diehard Funko fans. 

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