PlayStation 2

Minority Report: Everybody Runs

The cutscenes voice acting is so-so, although it doesn’t sound like the real actors from the movie did any of the voice work. Some of the lines coming from the characters contain emotion and feeling, but the script they are reading from seems quite rigid and takes many turns that don’t seem very natural.

Minority Report is a game with a lot of promise, especially since the story’s interesting plot just keeps introducing many different possibilities, yet it just doesn’t come close to being as fresh as the movie was or keeps you hooked with new ideas. Each level just feels like the last level you played, which is an unfortunate aspect that keeps the game from being truly inventive. Still, there are some pretty fun fights in this game that might be worth going through as a weekend rental.

Minority Report is a great movie and definitely a license that could have become a fantastic game. Perhaps the first mistake was trying to find a balance between the film and doing something new. Treyarch should probably have decided to either do a near-direct translation of the picture or a wholly different concept all together. Instead, they did a bit of this and a bit of that, and the results are poor plot points and lousy stage design. A mixed-bag, and not worth your hard-earned cash, Minority Report is certainly qualified as a weekend rental, but shouldn't find itself in your collection any time soon.

There’s one positive aspect in the game’s glut of minuses: Having the ability to throw and grab enemies as part of a combo is pleasing for the fingers and does add variety to the gameplay. Still, that’s not enough. Minority Report clearly belongs in the bin of horrendous movie-to-game translations.

Minority Report's uneven presentation and its incongruence with the spirit of the movie make it just another bad licensed-property video game. It's not entirely devoid of enjoyable moments, but said enjoyment is fleeting and wholly unrelated to the source material. It's just one of those games where the license plays the part of the cart and the game is the horse, and the developer didn't bother to figure out a way to hitch them in the right order before starting work on the game.

Oh, and PlayStation 2 owners got one full day to return this game before their Xbox and GameCube brethren. But really, when compared to the overall debacle, who really cares which version is superior? The report on Minority Report? Remedial action with faint glimmers of fun, wiped out by tedious and insipid gameplay.