Back on February 14, the box office received a little movie called Jumper. Starring Hayden Christensen, Diane Lane and Samuel L. Jackson, the premise was based around a few special individuals that have the ability to teleport anywhere their imagination wanders as long as they had previously seen a photograph. The critical reception for the film didn’t win over many fans as it was labeled as lethargic, incomprehensible, and a tedious film. With those attributes attached to the franchise already, it’s no wonder that many casual gamers didn’t know there was a video game being released before stumbling upon it on store shelves because it’s even worse than the film.

Jumper: Griffin’s Story is prequel to the events of the film revolving around Jamie Bell’s supporting character from the movie, Griffin. Griffin is a fellow jumper that is out to avenge the death of his parents. If you haven’t seen the film, our recommendation is to do so immediately before playing the game because the first problem with the game is that it provides no depth in retelling the storyline in any manner. The developer expects everyone who plays Jumper to already have watched the movie and obtained all the information themselves on who the characters are. Many gamers will want to at least get a plot summary of the movie as there’s not much here to follow by.

Jumper’s gameplay lies within the button-masher realm. Griffin will embark on missions where he must fight countless Paladins -- an organization out to kill all Jumpers -- and make use of floating orbs to teleport. Many gamers will find this ironic as Griffin should have the ability to teleport anywhere he’d like, but the game limits the players only to teleporting from orb to orb.

The combat is based around hitting the face buttons (X, Y, A, B) in a corresponding manner of how the enemies are situated. If an enemy is facing to your left, hitting the B button will teleport you to their right side for a blindside attack. This method, the one of hitting them from behind, is the best way to play through Jumper with ease. The game makes it a little easier to figure out which side to attack as there’ll be a red bar indicating where they’re blocking and a green bar where the best spot to attack is. If you attack where the green bar is located, then you’ll be able to fill up your power bar to unleash a special slow-motion attack to get one up on the opposition.

Outside of those basics from the combat, there’s a customizable combo system and “extreme kills” to take advantage of. The combo system allows player to set up their “starters,” “mids,” and “finishers” to keep attacking the enemies without any stopping. As for the “extreme kills,” they’re when Griffin enters into a cut scene and grabs hold of the enemy and transports them to a different area to leave them to die. All of the “extreme kills” are done in CGI and happen to be the most intriguing part of the entire game.

Graphically speaking, the game is clearly a generation behind: the enemy models are reused over and over again, everyone in the game is poorly animated, and the camera is clumsy. Perhaps if developers fixed the camera then the game might be actually worthy of playing through as a rental, but even then, the frame rates constantly drop below a manageable level and there’s not many effects to go with the combat. It’s just not that pleasing on the eyes.

If your gamer score is important to you, then Jumper is the game for you as it hands them out like candy on Halloween night. Players should be able to unlock almost all the achievement points after one run through with the game. Outside of that, the other bright spot about Jumper is that it’s a short rollercoaster ride that you’ll be glad to get off of. Lasting only a few hours, it shouldn’t take too long to complete.

Gameplay: 3.9
They had a great game mechanic to work with – jumping/teleporting – but it didn’t exactly translate well into the game.

Graphics: 2.5
Visually, it is two steps back for the Xbox 360 standard.

Sound: 5.5
Jamie Bell reprises his character for voice-acting so that’s a plus. Outside of that, the orchestra music isn’t half bad.

Difficulty: Easy
The game was essentially made for the younger crowd, so the difficulty isn’t at an all-time high.

Concept: 3.0
Movie tie-ins aren’t anything new, but at least having it as a prequel to the movie makes it more worthy of a fanatic’s time.

Overall: 3.5
There could have been a lot of innovative aspects, but in the end, it’s too repetitive. With not challenging the gamers, Jumper’s only redeeming factor is the easy-to-earn achievement points.