Stop me if you've heard this one. A group of body building, speedo loving, stereotypical men, one woman and a polar bear chase thieves. These thieves steal giant jars of vitamins and you must capture them by flexing your muscles. Chances are you haven't seen this kind of crazy since Feel the Magic XY XX, Katamari Damacy, or Incredible Crisis pop up in years past. It's the kind of crazy that becomes a game of chance for the developer. Will you make the next cult classic or will you release something like Tornado Outbreak for Xbox 360? Muscle March has the press to back it but none of the game.
Once you have posed enough times you then must catch the thief by shaking the Wiimote and Nun chuck up and down as fast as possible, this is very similar to getting up from a knockdown in Punch-Out.
The problem is this concept works initially but as the game speeds up the motion controls get unreliable. The game simply becomes confused on the faster stages, and while you may be flexing your right arm at the last possible second the game can freak out and the character moves both his arms up or down.
Each event of which there are three of consist of three stages. The first two are rather simple and easy but the last is a pain in all three events and thats when the thief is Mech Muscle. Why this is a pain is the speed intensifies making the controls shaky, and you have a very low chance of catching the Mech Muscle no matter how hard you shake the controllers. I won't say its impossible but it certainly isn't likely to catch him until your second or third try.
So thats the basics and it isn't without its sharp edges but what this game perfects is style. The soundtrack is catchy and bizarre some songs feeling like very good imitations of Katamari Damacy tracks. The characters are very colorful and really want to shake their behinds at you, but most importantly the environment and the actual chase is hilarious to watch and truly the best part of this entire game. This is made great by most of the animation being cardboard cutouts attempting animation in a 3D landscape, its a nice touch that separates it from the Katamari design of your march routes.
Once you beat all three Muscle March events there is an infinite run available for the high score players giving this game some extra replay value. Namco Bandai gets the theme and style right and while the controls are not perfect it still is worth the price of five dollars in Wii points.
Graphics | Audio | Gameplay | Replay | Genre | Final |
