Reviewing licensed games tied to movies is difficult for many reasons: for once this sort of titles are mostly poorly designed and it is clear that devs were mostly just motivated by their paycheck to complete their task; second, since the release has to coincide with the movie, the time of development is incredibly stricted and short, meaning the final result will be either rushed or just poorly designed.

That wasn't the case for this one: I admit I have a lot of nostalgia for this: Madagascar was one of my favorite movies as a kid and it's probably the case because I played the playstation videogame over and over again. But honestly this title is pretty decent.

It's really clear Toys for Bob enjoyed the movie, since they put a lot of effort to a title that admittely, didn't really needed to go hard.

THis could have easily been a poorly designed 3D platformer with nothing to sneeze at. Instead you find yourself kicikng children from the Zoo's fences, jumping around the Manhattan's cars, grappling sailors with a hook and send them to drown in the middle of the ocean, playing arcade machines where you command tanks, riding ostriches..... and also playing minigolf and curling with a polar bear.

Madagascar is a bit of a underrated gem: it take sthe silly premise of the first movie and gives you a set of levels that while short, express a lot of charming variety in a lot of aspects: you got literal stealth sections that are actually fun to navigate followed by collectathon sections that sorta reminds me of Banjo&Kazooie, actions and powerups that are stupidly hilarious (Melman has a freaking helicopter spin like freaking Tails, and Gloria has a Butt Smash) and it even introduces characters and locations that fit the vibe and works kinda well.

Admittely it's nothing incredible, it's still something targetted to kids that doesn't really leave you life-changing experiences... but for what it is, it works really well.
Add to this a presentation and music pretty nice, a decent voice acting and THE BEST MINIGOLF EVER MADE, and you got a nostalgic ride that can be fun to revisit.

All I remember is that I got real close to the end and stopped playing. It's a cheap tie-in, from an era when this was normal, and most of them sucked. This doesn't deviate from the standard. It's a platformer but it's very mediocre all around, played only because my younger self was a lot less picky about how games played.

To be honest, as far as some games can go (Especially from the tie-in era), this isn't even that bad, it's just extremely mediocre, and would only recommend if you're interested in shovelware.

SCORE: 4.5/10

This game undeniably has something that makes it stick out in the memories of all of us who played it as a kid. The game tries to be many different things which means its not incredible at any of them. But it has platforming and racing and stealth gameplay and FPS segments and a minigolf course and shuffleboard and honestly I could keep going. It's far from a perfect video game but it is a sincerely inspired attempt to make a game based on the movie Madagascar. And that's all this game ever had to be.