I've never collected Funko Pops, though Funko Fusion still caught me. I was intrigued by its bizarre concept of mixing completely unrelated entertainment franchises into a third-person shooter, and when it became clear that it was inspired by LEGO video games I was even more on board. But after playing Funko FusionI can say that Funko fans should stick to buying the vinyl figures instead.
Funko Fusions odd collection of random IPs sounds like a fun idea on paper, but it doesn't work in execution. The list of franchisees represented in Funko Fusion run the spectrum from Five Nights at Freddy's to Mega manrepresented through unlockable characters and playable scenes. Seven of the franchises get full-scale worlds where most of the action takes place, although it's like the IPs chosen to get this greater focus were pulled out of a hat. It is puzzling The Umbrella Academyyears from the height of its popularity and coming after an almost universally panned final season, has five levels dedicated to it while something with more cultural relevance in 2024, which Invincibleonly have one. And at the same time, I love Edgar Wright's fun action comedy from 2007 Hot Fuzzit's odd that it also has five levels instead of Wright's own Shaun of the Deadwhich is easily the more popular film.
Even so, it can be fun to find special characters like Chucky from Child's play in Funko Fusionand there's an absurdity to it all that at least makes things entertaining on a surface level. The developers clearly have a love for the IP contained within Funko Fusionwith clever elements such as number five from Umbrella Academy teleport instead of ducking like the other playable characters in the game. It's also neat to see these franchise worlds recreated and die-hard fans of the IPs will get some entertainment value from exploring certain levels.
But when it comes to actually playing the game, Funko Fusion is a disaster. Players will quickly forget the messy charm of seeing random franchises thrown at a dartboard once they're in the trenches trying to play the game. A typical one Funko Fusion level is a mostly open area where players walk around, solve simple puzzles with vague objectives, and shoot a bunch of enemy Funko Pops. It can be confusing at times to know where to go next or what to do, and the game suffers from being extremely repetitive and buggy. Players won't know if they can't advance the story because they haven't figured out what to do or because the game isn't working properly.
All franchises are featured in Funko Fusion
- Back to the future
- Battlestar Galactica
- Big boy
- Child's play
- Five Nights at Freddy's
- Funko
- Hot Fuzz
- Invincible
- Jaws
- Jurassic Park
- KFC
- Knight Rider
- Master of the Universe
- M3GAN
- Mega man
- The mummy
- No
- Scott Pilgrim vs. the world
- Shaun of the Dead
- Team Fortress 2 (DLC)
- The Thing
- The Umbrella Academy
- The Walking Dead (DLC)
- Voltron: Legendary Defender
- Xena: The Warrior Princess
And even when everything works right, Funko Fusion goals can be incredibly boring. Several levels have escort missions, which are rarely fun. A particularly annoying escort mission can be found in one Jurassic World stage where players must escort a gyro ball through an area they had already explored in a previous level. Players must keep enemies away from the ball and stay close to it to make it move, but touching the ball knocks players down. This will happen a dozen times or so as players reach the end of the level. Combine this with the extreme lag that Jurassic World levels seem to suffer, and players will have no desire to replay them.
Sorry, unlocking Funko Fusions secret characters and levels often involve replaying already completed stages, which only adds to the game's repetitiveness. To take a page out LEGO gamebook, players are encouraged to replay levels with different characters with unique abilities that can then be used to solve puzzles that were impossible to complete on a first playthrough. In theory this would give Funko Fusion great replay value, but since the levels are already so miserable to play, the thought of replaying them leaves one with a deep sense of dread.
Funko Fusion Boss Fights are terrible
Funko FusionThe biggest problems are evident in its terrible boss fights. Like its levels, Funko Fusion Boss fights are repetitive, buggy and often take far too long. Many of the bosses rely on a ground-pound attack that sends a shockwave out for players to jump over, and in most cases killing them is a matter of shooting weak points or tediously filling a tube with purple goo. The bosses are annoying because they often take too long to inflict damage on themselves, and even then it takes so long to kill some of them that players start to question whether the game is hacked.
But while Funko Fusions boss fights are terrible, 10:10 Games have, to their credit, already made some major improvements over how they were when the game launched. The latest Funko Fusion the update has rebalanced some boss fights to make them more tolerable, mainly by getting rid of the enemies that keep respawning. Before the update, Funko Fusion players were not only dealing with the boss, but in some cases an endless barrage of enemies that made it difficult to focus on the fight itself. These enemies often interrupted drink animations as well, making healing or activating buffs much more frustrating than necessary. After updating, Funko Fusions boss battles are definitely improved, although their core design is still lacking.
The final boss fight at the end of Funko Fusion worlds end with kaiju-like battles where players don't really participate and instead watch the action unfold, which is anti-climactic to say the least. The stories told in each world also suffer from a lack of proper pay-off, med The Umbrella Academy the world is one of the worst offenders. Its first two missions tell the story of Season 1, but Season 2 is mostly skipped, and then the last couple of levels take place in Season 3. It's impossible to follow or care. Funko Fusion trying to imitate LEGO game's slapstick way of retelling stories, but it's a poor imitation.
Funko Fusion
The latest balance update has also improved progression, allowing players to unlock new worlds faster and get to the final boss without having to complete all the bonus levels.
From its creepy cutscenes to its general concept, Funko Fusion often appears as an off-brand LEGO game. It tries to replicate things like the fun of smashing every object in sight, but delivers something far less satisfying since most of the objects players can hit don't even break. Mostly they bounce, spin and shoot out little orbs that act like Funko Fusions currency. Players can use said money on machines scattered throughout the levels to obtain healing items and weapons, as well as generate essential items required to progress through a given stage. I think this should be it Funko Fusions equivalent to the buildable items i LEGO game, but like the other ways Funko Fusion trying to copy LEGO game, it doesn't generate the same excitement.
A defining characteristic of LEGO game is co-op support. Predictably, Funko Fusion confirmed co-op a long time ago, but it's not available in-game as of this writing. Funko Fusion will get online co-op in October, but having such a major feature unavailable at launch is really a major decision. Anyone interested in playing through Funko Fusion will already have done that when co-op is in the game, and the levels aren't nearly enough fun to justify playing through them again with a friend.
Funko Fusion fumbles with its interesting concept of near-bottom play, and it's hard to see how co-op could make it more palatable. That said, the game's latest balance update have at least made it a little better, and so maybe future updates will make a bigger difference than expected.
Funko Fusion is available now for PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X with Switch and PS4 versions launching on November 15th. Game Rant was provided with a PC code for this review.
