At times, I feel bad for people who decide to enter the video game design/development field.  They come with their background in graphic design, programming, audio engineering, writing, etc. and have high hopes of creating something that they will enjoy making, a labor of love if you will.  I doubt they believe they will get stuck creating crummy licensed tie-ins hoping only to cash in on the popularity of a movie.  Unfortunately, that's exactly what this game is.  While I do feel bad for them being tasked to make this (hey, I'm sure they have bills to pay and families to feed), I will display no such sympathy in their vile product.

Elf, as you most likely know by now considering it's 2013, is a Christmas movie starring Will Ferrell as Buddy, a human raised by Santa's elves.  Buddy learns he's a human and goes to New York City to find his real dad.  Christmas magic happens, Scrooges become filled with Christmas Spirit™, Buddy finds love, Christmas is saved, happy endings all around.  Despite my biting sarcasm in that description, I actually love Elf.  It's probably one of my favorite Christmas movies.  It's also a comedy that in no way suits itself for a video game, a fact that clearly shows itself in this game.  If you didn't know anything about the movie, don't expect to learn much about it from this game.  Outside a few blurry screenshots taken directly from the movie and a few loose (I emphasis the term "loose" here) references to the movie plot, there is little connecting game to movie. 

You start the game wandering throughout the north pole, dodging polar bears, jumping  over pits, and collecting candy.  This is from the part of the movie that...umm, no, wait, there is no part in the movie where this happens. In any case, you do this for the first few levels.  In an already terrible game, these platforming stages are the worst part and the most plentiful.  They are the garbage patty that makes up the majority of your deluxe refuse burger that is this game (I apologize if my metaphors are a little too subtle).  You traverse these boring, ugly backgrounds (made up of the pseudo-3D graphics GBA games loved to fail at) hoping you reach the end sooner rather than later.  But just  as bad as the tedium is how frustrating it is to navigate these stages.  This game has the rare trait of being both frustrating and easy.  Your life bar is huge, death is infrequent, and enemies are almost non-existent.  What will trouble you are the jumps.  If you are as much as a pixel off, too bad.  What's worse is every time you take a hit, fall off a pit, etc. you go all the way back  to the last checkpoint.  These checkpoints can be relatively far between one another. This ends up doing little more than slowing you down and making tedious segments even more time-consuming.

Outside platforming, there are also some top-down levels.  These make a strong case for being the worst part of the game, although they fall short of the aforementioned platforming segments for that crown.  They involve running  around, avoiding cars that might run you over, and collecting Christmas ornaments.  It's relatively the same as the platforming segments with a bit of collecting added.  The graphics are just as bad, if not worse thanks to the perspective.  The music and sound effects are still bland and make you want to rip your ears off.  There are only two good things about these parts: One is that they are mercifully short.  The other is how some cars stop while the yellow ones continue to go.  Almost like a little homage to the movie.  It's probably the most faithful to the movie the game ever gets, so enjoy it.

Besides these, we have a small handful of mini-games to make up the rest of this turd.  And honestly?  These mini-games are the best part of the game, by far.  Not best in "you should play this just for the mini-games!" sense, but best in "Huh, you know, I'm merely bored out of my mind playing this instead of feeling as if I am being tortured by an inquisition hoping to make me repent for my heretical ways."  It's the small victories we must look forward to.  In any case, these mini-games are nothing you haven't seen before.  You've got your pipe-dream ripoff, a simon-says ripoff involving hitting elevator buttons, matching presents with the right color house, and a brain-dead simply snowball fight.  As generic as they are, I feel the game would have been much better if it was sole made up of these games.  They show a vague, feeble attempt at tying the game into the movie and offer at least some variety (of course, when I saw variety, I kindly forget that they make you play the pipe-dream and simon says games back-to-back-to-back with only the most modest increases in difficulty...) That would have made this game merely bad instead of awful.  It's also possible the platforming parts made me develop a kind of Stockholm syndrome for the mini-games.  At least the developers felt they were sort of on to something and included a mini-game mode in the main menu, so there's that, I guess.

The game ends with a "thrilling" chase by park rangers for Santa. You control Santa in his sled and must collecting 20 bells for Christmas Spirit™.  You'll likely play this level twice, once when you fail because you have no idea what you are doing and then a second time when you easily beat it.  You are then treated to an ending screen where the game exclaims how Buddy has "saved Christmas," while cheerfully forgetting that the game itself ruined Christmas.  And then, that's it.  You can go back and play the mini-games if you really want to, but if you're sane you will stop and attempt to banish this game from your memory.  Actually, if you were truly sane to begin with you would have laughed at the idea of playing this game.  In either case, you will most likely have finished in less than 50 minutes, so at least you will have plenty of time left in the day to regret ever playing this game.

Now, perhaps I'm being a little too hard on this game.  It's pretty obvious this was meant for someone between the ages of, say, 5-8-years-old, and I have missed age group by about a decade and a half.  But I have doubts very many 5-8-year-olds would have the patience (or, in my case, the sheer desire for video game masochism) to stumble through nearly an hour worth of repetitive platforming and uninspired mini-games, set to the most vanilla sorta-Christmas music and accompanying sound effects that man can find on this planet.  I know I sure wouldn't have when I was that age.  Even if this fictional child you would make this game for is the biggest Elf fan in the world, there is still very little to appeal to him here, which may be the worst part of the package.  It's one thing to expect poor gameplay and overall quality from a quick movie cash-in game like this, but you would at least expect a passing effort be made to include a fair number of movie references.  Maybe some text explaining some plot of the movie at certain levels.  But you are not.  If you called this game "Generic Santa's Elf Platform," there would be very little that could tip people off that this was actually suppose to be a movie game.  That may be the biggest crime this game commits.

There are very few positives about this game, but they do exist.  The controls work fine.  Granted, the majority of the game consists of using only left and right to move and A to jump, so this isn't exactly high praise.  But I have seen games control much sloppier and less precise than Elf, so I can't say too much bad about the controls.  The game is also, as stated before, short.  Really short.  Considering every minute playing this game seems like an eternity, this is a godsend.  Finally, the mini-games are passable.  Generic, repetitive, carbon-copies of mini-games you've played countless times, even if you don't play video games that much, but passable nonetheless.  I should note here I've had professors in college who considered a grade in the high 60s passing (albeit barely), so take "passable" for what you will.

FINAL GRADES:

Graphics (1/10): Horrible and blurry describe this game's visual appeal.  The fake 3D-esque style does it no favors and the majority of the game is made up of a figure vaguely resembling Will Ferrell jumping around uninspired winter-themed levels.  The mini-games that don't involve this style are  a little better, but that does not take much.  Even the stills from the movie come out very muddy and pixelated.  Not a pretty game to look at by any means.

Sound (1/10): The music is generic Christmas-sounding jingles that will quickly grate your nerves.  The sound effects are no better.  Do yourself a favor (if for some reason you must play this game) and mute the music and sound within the first five minutes.  Then play some real Christmas music to soothe your soul.  I recommend some Frank Sinatra.  Perhaps some "Santa Clause is Coming to Town" by Bruce Springsteen.  If you're in the mood for something a little humorous, may I recommend Bob and Doug McKenzie's version of "The 12 Days of Christmas" ?  Just a little bit of a treat for the poor brave souls who are still reading my review this late into the game. 

Controls (7/10): I can't say anything bad about the controls.  Really, I can't.  They aren't slippery or unresponsive.  They work and are even relatively precise.  I have played games with much worse controls.  These controls are truly the crown jewels of this horrid piece of work.  There are a few weak points in the controls (especially the last level with Santa's sled), but I'll be generous here with a seven.  Consider it my Christmas present to this game.  

Story (2/10):  I only gave it an extra point because I'm a fan of the movie, but again, it so poorly and infrequently references the movie that I am again being quite generous with it.  The actual film has a relatively solid, if not surprising, plot.  At worst, it's a vehicle for Will Ferrell to be humorous, which is really all you are looking for in that movie.  The game decided to push this strength by staying connected to the plot in only the vaguest of manners.  If you gave this game to someone who never watched the movie and asked them to give you a brief summary of the plot, they would be lost.  You would have an equal if not better chance of giving a chimpanzee a box score from a local little league baseball team and asking them to give you a play-by-play account of the last 10 World Series.

Gameplay (1/10): Boring, frustrating platforming meets generic, cookie-cutter mini-games.  Sounds a touch similar to the romance plot for one of the latest Hallmark Christmas movies (ok, maybe not). While those movies usually end in some sappy, rainbow-filled ending, this combo only leads to sadness and a mess of a game.

Difficulty (3/10): Not difficult, yet still frustrating!  Two blah tastes taste blah together.  Seriously, don't play this game.

Replay value (1/10): You can and most likely will beat this game in under an hour.  There is zero reason to ever want to replay the story.  You could always go back to the mini-game mode, but that just raises the question... why would you?

Overall (1/10):  I can't hammer this point home enough: This is the worst Christmas game I have ever played and one of the worst games I have ever played.  Do yourself a favor and watch (or re-watch) the movie.  You will have a much better time.

I read through the whole review, and I'm pretty impressed by how far you went into detail. I actually felt like I was almost suffering with you by just your descriptions of it.. Which isn't a good thing when you think about it. But it's still pretty impressive in the amount of detail you got in about every mechanic and game. Overall, I'd say it was a very good review. Though not sure if my positive critique of your review was at all worth the pain you went through to beat this game in the first place. Anyway, great review, and try drinking plenty of eggnog. Maybe that'd get the game out of your memory.

huh123 : i am really impressed on how much you wrote of this review dude you did a really great job