Funk Fusion Preview: Violent Cartoon Fan Service, Wrapped in Pretty Plastic

Upcoming action-adventure title Funko Fusion is a bright and busy grab bag of fan-first distractions thus far. The upcoming debut from studio 10:10 Games presents plentiful light action-adventure gameplay centered on the longstanding sensation of collectible vinyl figurines in general, and its license with NBCUniversal in particular. This means that players will be able to control characters and explore backdrops sourced from a rainbow of different properties, including The Walking Dead, Invincible, Jurassic Park, and films from Edgar Wright’s Cornetto trilogy.

Screen Rant was able to test-drive elements from those last two in our preview, with a playable Funko Fusion experience that sets the premise of the game using these two disparate franchises. Four characters from Hot Fuzz and Jurassic World were available to swap between, unleashing chaos upon scenes and settings pulled from the films and reconfigured through a madcap lens.

Anyone familiar with the licensed Lego games of yore will sense an immediate familiarity here. And so, each Funko Fusion level features plenty of destructible environmental details, this time yielding multicolored plastic gems instead of studs and bricks. These collectibles are hoovered up and processed into items, gear, and yet more collectibles and unlocks. It’s all very shiny, noisy, and unexpectedly violent, and we spent a good four hours scouting out film references and secrets in the current preview build.

Life In Plastic, It’s Fantastic

Funko Fusion’s Bizarrely Silly Premise Travels Through Licensed Toy Dimensions

Freddy Funko takes center stage in Funko Fusion, with a primarily wordless narrative that sees the company’s mascot replicated by a sinister force of sentient purple goo. This new nemesis “Eddy” then flies off to pervert classic films in their traversable worlds; for instance, he possesses a massive dinosaur to relive the pterosaur-filled park chaos of the first Jurassic World.

Players choose one of four Funko Pops to control at the start, all of whom are presumably purchasable IRL figurines as well. Jurassic World obviously offers Owen Grady (Chris Pratt), but also features Barry Sembène (Omar Sy) as a controllable avatar. We expect the full game will continue with unlockable main and side characters for any interactive licenses here, but there’s a good spread available for both films in the preview.

The full list of playable Funko Pop avatars in our Funko Fusion preview included the following, with their original actors in parentheses:

• Hot Fuzz: Nicholas Angel (Simon Pegg)
• Danny Butterman (Nick Frost)
• Sgt. Tony Fisher (Kevin Eldon)
• Doris Thatcher (Olivia Colman)
• Jurassic World: Owen Grady (Chris Pratt)
• Claire Dearing (Bryce Dallas Howard)
• Barry Sembène (Omar Sy)
• Kayla Watts (DeWanda Wise)

Moreover, the characters aren’t mere cosmetic skins; Funko Fusion equips each with a unique firearm and melee weapon, adding some unexpected variety. Hot Fuzz’s Danny Butterman (Nick Frost) gets his own Cornetto ice cream cone to smack baddies with, whereas Olivia Colman’s Doris Thatcher wields her yellow wet floor sign.

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That said, we didn’t find anything too mechanically distinct among the weapons, but the Pops get rifles, pistols, shotguns, and the like, and most serve to highlight the film sources, even if playing as different Funkos never altered the narrative in any way. Players also shouldn’t feel trapped by their character pick, as every level offers numerous swap stations, and the figurines share their inventory, which persists between levels.

Broken Toys and Plastic Violence

Funko Fusion Can Be Weirdly Violent, But These Are Just Vinyl Figurines, After All

So, what is there to do in Funko Fusion? Each stage offers a gated playground with progress broken up into checkpointed tasks. This could mean unlocking an electrified gate, guiding baby raptors to a helipad for rescue, collecting the right gems or items to interact with a puzzle, or blasting through enemy waves. The action is usually stumbly and imprecise, but also on the lower end of the difficulty scale, which causes the game to feel oriented towards younger players, just like the Lego games.

What’s peculiar is how surprisingly grotesque a lot of it gets. Funkos get decapitated, beaten, crushed and, while none of this is rendered in a gory way, the inherent imagery is much more violent than the licensed Lego series, even if an essential silliness permeates the action. If one could imagine that a decapitation – complete with wet drops of cartoon blood – could be somehow rendered as cute, that more or less demonstrates the game’s scrambled tone.

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We did encounter a number of situations during our preview where quest objectives were minimally explained, which prompted a lot of running around gated areas to find any interactive point that was missed. As with the Lego games, Funko Fusion has its own slew of side objectives, achievements, and other nifty time-wasters, but there’s very little guidance for any of them. For instance, if a player happens upon a special level-specific collectible, they’ll suddenly learn that they should have been looking out for it in the first place.

Hey, Down In Front!

Blocky Heads Aside, Funko Fusion’s Combat Is Functional But Unsatisfying

It’s a minor criticism overall, considering that Funko Fusion never takes itself too seriously, plastic gore and all. That outlook relates to the combat as well, which is functional but never sharp or satisfying, with most enemies just crowding the player and popping shots with perfect aim from afar. Health is generous and can be regenerated by using soda bottles; in a fun twist, players can even deposit spent bottles in recycling bins to earn yet more gems.

There’s a range of special weapons, explosives, and one-shot buffs that can be printed out from machines which populate every area, giving players alternate ways to deal with the hordes of themed enemies. While these rarely felt necessary, having more options is always a plus in a game like this, and it felt rewarding to scour levels and eventually unlock new printable gear.

Funko Fusion’s style is busy but usually easy to read, with surprising amounts of detail in its textures and level design. What’s more concerning are the actual dimensions and physical qualities of the Funko Pops themselves, with massive rectangular heads blocking more of the screen than they should. Holding left trigger zooms the camera behind the player’s back for precise aiming – something which is hardly ever useful or called for by the action – and this blots out a near 1/3rd of the screen. Is it consistent with the toys? Sure, but it’s utterly impractical for a game camera.

Final Thoughts On The Preview

Fun To Comb Through, But It Might Struggle To Find An Audience

After spending ample time shooting dinos and winos, we’re convinced that the Venn diagram of Funko Fusion and the Lego games has a wide and spacious intersection. Both are filled with Easter eggs, hidden collectibles, and numerous opportunities to smash a room to pieces and collect anything that falls out. There’s even the same familiar-but-goofy licensed narratives with barely a word of dialogue, along with the hectic combat chaos alleviated by the gentlest of punishments for failure.

It all amounts to a carnival version of notable movie worlds, though Funko Fusion currently seems a bit too edgy for young children – some enigmatic level objectives also don’t help in this regard – while simultaneously too shallow for adults. There’s a fine line incorporating challenge, engaging gameplay, and straightforward fan service, and our preview portion never embodied this balance with grace.

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Then again, whacking velociraptors and flamethrowing British cultists does carry some appeal, and it’s fun to comb through Funko Fusion’s levels to find all the goodies and solve any secret contraptions. It’s worth remembering that the Lego games had a longer shelf life than most anyone expected, especially when it came to their multiplayer components, something Funko Fusion’s developers promise for release, but which was unavailable to test in this preview.

There’s a vast library of potential content to play with in this plastic playground, and eventually combining elements from films like M3GAN and Child’s Play with the Voltron and Masters of the Universe cartoons sounds like a surefire sell, if only as an outright oddity. It’s even arguable that any tone problems we experienced support this very concept itself, all part of the dimension-hopping deal. Overall, Funko Fusion is shaping up to be a good time thus far, just don’t zoom in.

Funko Fusion

In Funko Fusion, players embark on a quest to collect and merge various Funko Pop! characters into unique, powerful combinations. The game blends strategy and adventure, featuring a variety of modes that allow for customization and exploration in a vibrant, collectible-filled world.

Systems

Released

September 13, 2024

Developer

10:10 Games

Publisher

10:10 Games

Multiplayer

Online Co-Op

Engine

Unreal Engine 5

ESRB

e

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