1.5/5 ★ – Lammy's review of Funko Fusion.

Funko Fusion post-plat review: Game's not good, folks. Funko Fusion is a puzzle-shooter by 10:10 Games starring everyone's favorite kitschy collectible, Funko Pops. 10:10 is made up of a lot of the folks who made the Lego video games, and I like those a lot, so I picked up the game hoping for something similarly charming. I did not get what I was hoping for here. The overarching story of Freddy Funko, the Funko Pop mascot, facing off against his evil doppelganger is pretty shallow, mostly serving as an excuse to head to various Funko-fied IP worlds and hit stuff. You'll travel to large hubs based on Jurassic World, Scott Pilgrim, Umbrella Academy, Masters of the Universe, Hot Fuzz, The Thing (1982) and Battlestar Galactica (1978). Each hub has 5 main levels, plus a "cameo" level based on unrelated one-off properties (Jaws, Nope, Shaun of the Dead, The Mummy, Back to the Future, Invincible and Five Nights at Freddy's). In each level, you travel through a surprisingly faithful recreation of the IP, complete a fetch/escort quest, grab a key, complete the level and repeat, picking up collectibles along the way. Puzzles range from babytime to borderline indecipherable, and combat is WAY too hard for this level of game, with hard hitting enemies often outnumbering you four or more to one. Ultimately, the gameplay loop is frustrating at best, turning the game into a slog buoyed only by the strength of the IPs. These properties, by the way, contribute to the game's wildly inconsistent tone. The game is presented as a fairly kiddy affair at first, but once you start with one of the many action or horror themed levels it becomes dark quick; there's a LOT of uncensored Funko gore, and the levels based on The Thing are actually horrifying. There's a shocking level of care in the handling of the IPs, but the IPs themselves are so varied in tone and audience that IDK who this is even for. I'd also be remiss if I didn't mention the game's horrible performance at times. Cutscenes lag frequently, action buttons simply decide to not work, object collision is inconsistent, crashes are a common occurrence and I was not infrequently softlocked and forced to reload a save to complete a level. There are no midlevel checkpoints, to add sting to the softlocks and crashes. The game got a few patches while I was playing it, and at least some of these seem to have strengthened performance a bit, but it's still BARELY playable. Overall, Funko Fusion is a bad video game that no one should play, cashing in on marketable IPs without any of the charm of similar franchise-remix platformers or the stability to carry its own weight. 3/10