Invizimals: The Lost Kingdom (PlayStation 3)

The Invizimals series of games have helped to draw a younger audience with RPG-influenced gameplay that focused on collecting monsters and pitting them against each other in battles. With Invizimals: The Lost Kingdom, the series makes the transition to consoles and eschewes the monster hunting of past instalments in order to provide a more straightforward platforming experience.

Platforming hero

The game’s story centres around a young adventurer called Hiro, who lives in a fantasy influenced world that’s threatened by a robot army. Fortunately, you have access to several of 16 fantastical beasts, known as Invizimals, and their different powers to traverse the environments and defeat the invading force.

The Invizimals games up to now have been augmented reality titles that made use of the camera on the PlayStation Portable. In those games, you used the camera to seek out invisible monsters to battle -- it was gameplay reminiscent of Pokemon.

The Invizimals: The Lost Kingdom is not that type of game but a third-person platformer with some RPG elements, such as the levelling up of your Invizimals. By doing so, you are able to increase the strength of your attacks and magic as the battles increase in difficulty.

Since the game is targeted at a younger audience, the core of the gameplay is centred around the adventuring and not on the stats and levelling up commonly found in RPGs. While this makes the game quite accessible to a young demographic, more seasoned players may yearn for greater depth that can be found in more high-profile titles on the market.

How the other half lives

As a platforming title, Invizimals: The Lost Kingdom is functional and does not do anything too different from other titles in the genre. The colourful presentation ensures that the game will appeal to younger players, though we found that some of the battles and puzzles further on were not that easy to overcome.

If you have played past Invizimals games, you may be surprised at the different direction the PlayStation 3 title has taken. In fact, those expecting an augmented reality monster collecting game may not warm up to Invizimals: The Lost Kingdom.

For those players, there is the recently released Invizimals: The Alliance for PlayStation Vita. However, since it can be linked up with the PlayStation 3 game to swap bonus game items, fans may end up investing in both titles.

There’s no shortage of titles aimed at core gamers, so those looking for a more accessible title will likely look into Invizimals: The Lost Kingdom.