Rio (PS3, X360, WII AND DS)

Rio is a multiplayer party game where players can play as their favorite characters from the movie.

Release Date: Apr 12, 2011

Get ready to challenge your friends and family to competitive mini-games while enjoying fun musical beats inspired by Rio the Movie

THQ and Twentieth Century Fox Consumer Products have announced that the RIO video game, now available in the UK for DS, PS3, Wii and Xbox 360, will launch in North America tomorrow, April 12th. On the Wii and PS3 systems, up to four players can compete with each other in 40 mini-games as one of the six playable characters from the film: Blu, Jewel, Pedro, Nico, Raphael, and Eva. The Xbox 360 platform offers three additional exclusive mini-games. Players can compete in five unique modes as they journey through Rio to win first place at the Carnival ceremony. RIO also features quick "jump in, jump out" gameplay, allowing players to enter and exit a game as they please - making it perfect for family and party fun. The Nintendo DS version offers a completely different experience from the console version via a rhythm-based adventure. As the main character from the film, Blu, players can use their stylus to discover Latin and hip hop beats as they navigate through 20 levels and seven awe-inspiring locations. RIO also features four fun mini-games where players will be able to party with the other characters from the film: Blu, Jewel and Luis.

Rio is a 3D comedy adventure about Blu, a rare domesticated bird who travels to the exotic land of Rio. Blu goes on the adventure of his life with the help of his female counterpart, Jewel, and a group of wise-cracking, smooth-talking city birds.

  
Birds fly, fish swim, grass grows, and THQ releases movie tie-in games. As recently as last year, I'd imagine Rio: The Game would've been a 3-D action-platformer that roughly tracked the arc of the movie's plot, as is the typical licensed title. Instead, it's now a four-player party game, with the single-player content taking the form of a score-based challenge against three AI-driven opponents.

It's probably not a bad call. Some of the minigames are distinctly stronger than others — the air hockey game is actually pretty fun, while "Dodgem" is about one step above something that'd have shipped on a cell phone in 1999 — but I could see a bunch of kids having fun with Rio. That alone puts it one step above a lot of movie tie-ins, which are often about as fun as math homework.

Rio is, in the broad strokes, the story of Blu, a member of a rare species of macaw. He lives a quiet life in a bookstore in Moose Lake, Minnesota, until somebody realizes he's the last surviving male of his species. Blu is promptly shipped off to Rio de Janeiro to meet the last known surviving female, Jewel, and wackiness ensues.

You can play Rio as Blu, Nico the canary, Rafael the toucan or Pedro the cardinal, who compete against each other in a bunch of minigames. As noted above, the "Story" mode puts you down on one end of a map, starting in Moose Lake, and you must perform well against three AI opponents in order to progress. Moose Lake's games are all snow-themed, like a snowball fight, ice hockey, or dodging snowballs as they roll down a slippery roof, and if you place in first or second against the AI, you can move on to further locations from the movie.

The other minigames can be played more directly in Party or Carnival modes, which are a straight-up single- to multiplayer tournament mode, with a randomly chosen assortment of games. This includes a mud fight where the winner is the first to get clean, divebombing monkeys with watermelons, playing "hot potato" with a bomb, and a "king of the mountain"-ish game where everyone gets pelted with beach balls and the last bird standing wins.

"Rio" is the next film from Carlos Saldanha, the guy who brought us the "Ice Age" movies, and Rio: The Gamebrings a lot of the music, color and humor of the movie along for the ride. In the great spirit of licensed games everywhere, its connection to the film is occasionally somewhat tenuous, but it's a reasonably entertaining kids' game with great presentation and no real learning curve.