DESPICABLE ME GUIDE

There is a new sequel out to the excellent film Despicable Me. In a surprising turn of events, a games company has decided that this epic tale is a rich vein to be tapped for the medium of interactive entertainment, and has released a mobile game based on the movie. Wait, I haven't even gotten to the most interesting part yet! It turns out that the genre deemed most suitable for the use of this license is a behind the back runner!

Gameloft's Despicable Me: Minion Rush  is another licensed runner. This is a genre that has become so overcrowded that even the licensed games are having to find ways to mix things up, at least a little bit. Minion Rush does try a few things to keep the game fresh, but ultimately it leans pretty heavily on its license and just doing things generally well enough to prop it up.

You play as one of the cute little minion characters from the movie, trying to become employee of the year by running very far? It's not clear what the goal of the run is, apart from wreaking havoc, but I doubt anyone is playing this for the story.


Game play uses the familiar three-lane system, with swipes in four directions causing you to move to the next track, jump, or slide. There are bananas scattered all over the place, which act as one of the game's two currencies. Additionally, there are several types of power-ups that appear, which can be additionally powered up by spending bananas. The other type of currency, tokens, sometimes appear, but at a maximum of five per day. The game is incredibly stingy with its second currency relative to how much things cost, to the point that it's basically worthless for anything but the occasional continue.

Like other games of this ilk, the key to doing well in Minion Rush is to drive your multiplier as high as you can. You can build your multiplier in the game by performing Despicable Acts. This is usually just running into or otherwise displacing your fellow minions, but you can also earn this bonus by wrecking and damaging things using some of the power-ups.

The levels in Minion Mayhem are made up of 2D courses in which you must get past locked doors, spiked pits, and all sorts of other traps to be successful. You don't have direct control over you minions; rather, you tap them to make them start walking and then manipulate the environment to get them to a specific place. For example, you may need to trigger a spring that rockets them up in the air or tap a button to extend a drawbridge.

Each minion has a unique special ability as well. Sumo minions directly dispatch enemies they come in contact with, driller minions burrow through the ground, gravity minions can walk on the ceiling, and other types of minions boast their own specific talents. When the minions bump into a wall or each other, they turn around and continue walking straight ahead until they die or reach the exit.

Your starting multiplier is determined by how many of the game's missions you complete. You have three in play at any given time, one each from Gru, Dr. Nefario, or Gru's daughters, with Gru's
generally being the most difficult to complete.

Because you have so little direct control over the actions of your minions, you have to be careful to plan your strategy before you set them in motion. It's satisfying to correctly read the layout of the land and guide your minions through these deadly traps. But it can also be incredibly frustrating to mistime one of your taps and watch in horror as your minion marches toward a fire trap with no way to save it from its imminent death.

Keeping track of all of your bumbling minions is a herculean task, and it can be aggravating when you're trying to deploy a bridge in one part of level but you need to trigger a trampoline to rescue another minion at the same time. The extreme coordination you need to make sure all of your minions are performing their proper duties is compounded by a pesky clock that makes the whole endeavor even more frantic. You only have 90 seconds to pass each level, and it takes a lot of trial and error to make sure everything runs smoothly and efficiently.

There is also a disproportionate amount of these missions are connected with the game's social features, such as recruiting your friends, beating their scores, issuing challenges, and so on. You can skip any mission using tokens, but it will use anywhere from six to ten days' worth of them to do so. This basically means that unless you're willing to spend real money on tokens, you're going to have to harass your friends if you want to raise your multiplier much past the first couple of levels.

If all of this sounds chaotic, then that's because it is, but that doesn't mean there isn't fun to be had. There is a feeling of great triumph when everything clicks and you successfully make your way past a level that was giving you fits earlier. Most stages can be completed with careful consideration and lots of patience, so it usually only takes a few attempts before you understand the main problems and figure out a way around them. The later levels present serious roadblocks though, and can be maddeningly hard.

But even after you have everything running like a well-oiled machine, there are still a couple of issues that stand in your path to success. The controls are not always responsive. For instance, tapping the button to make a bridge roll out doesn't always register, and because one mistake can lead to a failed mission, it's troubling when you do everything correctly but still end up on the losing end. Certain stages also mess with your view, randomly rotating the screen or forcing the camera to gyrate. This makes a hard game needlessly more difficult, and it's rather nauseating to boot

If you can look past Minion Mayhem's issues, there's a good deal of content here. Achieving high scores on levels opens up bonus stages, and it is fun to go back to previous levels to perfect your actions. However, it takes a lot of dedication to become that proficient at this challenging game. The iffy controls and sharp difficulty curve make this a tough game to get into, hiding the well-designed puzzles behind a cloud of issues. If you relish a serious challenge in your puzzle games, Minion Mayhem can be fun when everything comes together, but there will be many frustrations along the way.


The game does a lot of things right. It's a beautiful game, with popping colors and a lot of variety even within the same areas. The minions are very well-realized, with a lot of personality in their voices and animation. For the most part, every type of death has its own unique animation, and even on the menu screen, your character has all kinds of funny extra animation.

Minion Rush also does a good job of mixing up the gameplay, often switching perspective to a side view, challenging you to the occasional boss fight, and throwing in motion-controlled sliding segments. Two of the power-ups change things up completely for their duration, with the XXL Potion flipping the camera around to the front as you use tilt controls to control your giant minion while he smashes everything in his path, and the Fluffy Unicorn bringing you to a banana-filled vertical segment calling to mind Doodle Jump.