Funko Pops are everywhere. Walk into any store, and there's a high chance that you'll run into a figure with a large head and beady eyes staring at you from a cardboard box with a plastic window. Whether you love them or hate Funko Pops, they give fans of pop culture something physical to collect. After years of making figures of every pop culture item, Funko finally has a licensed video game with Funko Fusion from a developer comprised mostly of alumni from Traveller's Tales — a developer that hit it really big with the licensed LEGO games. The hope is that Funko Fusion would hit the same enjoyment level as the original LEGO Star Wars, but the game doesn't hit that mark.

Before the game begins, you're tasked with selecting your favorite character from the seven represented franchises. Jurassic World represents a big hit mainstream movie, and there are cult classics like Scott Pilgrim vs. The World and Hot Fuzz. There are also classics like the original 1982 version of The Thing. Live action TV shows also get the classic and modern treatment with Battlestar Galactica from 1978 representing the former and The Umbrella Academy from Netflix representing the latter. Even animation gets into the mix with Masters of the Universe. Each franchise provides a selection of four characters to work with, and that initial selection is important because it dictates what your first world is going to be based on. Subsequent character choices do the same later on in the adventure.

If you couldn't tell from the licenses involved, this isn't exactly a game for young kids. That feeling is amplified once you discover that some of the game's hidden characters are based on TV shows and movies like Jaws, Invincible, Chucky, and Shaun of the Dead. There's quite a bit of gore, like some characters melting into skeletons and a good deal of blood. While there's some humor that's appropriate enough for all ages, this game isn't made for everyone, despite coming from a big toy line.

Once you select a character, you still aren't given any narrative beats. You're left alone to wander the facility until you meet up with and free Foxxo from his prison. From there, you'll go to the main factory to meet Freddy Funko. The meeting doesn't last long, as a purple ooze calling itself Eddy appears, kills Foxxo and tries to take Freddy's crown. After a skirmish involving mechs, giant versions of Eddy, and a tug of war, Freddy is gravely injured, and the crown is fragmented across the seven worlds. Your job is to venture to each of the worlds and restore the crown's power before Eddy does the same and breaks the universe.

No matter which world you choose, the basic gameplay remains the same. Each world comes with five levels to traverse, each of them based on a major moment from its respective film. The main goal is to reach the end of the level and retrieve the Fun Key used to unlock the safehouse that acts as your portal to the world's next level. While the goal is always the same, the level missions vary greatly. Some might ask you to eliminate certain targets before you get the key, like knocking out some dilophosauruses in Jurassic World. Others might ask you to rescue animals like the huskies in The Thing or decipher crime scenes in Hot Fuzz. There's a good mix of miniboss fights and major boss fights. There are a few puzzles, but they aren't overly difficult; many rely on finding and recharging batteries to open a few doors or turning valves to deactivate hazards.

For the most part, the various objectives are fine, but the execution of some is lacking. For example, it's OK to accompany the sphere in Jurassic World, but you can't get too close to it unless you like getting knocked down for a few seconds. The boss fights at the end of each world also feel less inspired when you discover that they all take the same pattern as the initial boss fight. It's cool to see the giant Funko figures appear for each world, but all of the boss fights feel too similar.

One of the more annoying aspects of each level comes in the form of crafting new tools and power-ups, as it always requires finding the appropriate icons and depositing them in the correct machines. You need multiple icons before you can use the tool, and carrying them nullifies your ability to attack. This can be really annoying if the station is a good distance away and you need to constantly fight your way there, causing you to put down the item and pick it up more times than necessary. Then there's the death mechanic, which requires you to fly back to the Funko box that lets you change characters to return to the playfield instead of just respawning on the spot. It is even more annoying when you suddenly have a timer attached to the mechanic; it feels unnecessary when so many Funko boxes are present in a level.

Speaking of combat, the game plays out similarly to Ratchet & Clank minus the ability to upgrade or change weapons. Everyone has a melee attack, and everyone has what is essentially a gun with unlimited ammo but needs to be reloaded or cooled down. This makes sense for some characters, but others have creative ways around this requirement, such as Ramona Flowers shooting stars from her purse or Prince Adam being given a laser pistol (even though he never carried such weapons in the TV show). You've got a basic zoom for guns and a basic combo for melee weapons. Each character also comes with their own firing pattern, whether that's single shot, rapid fire, or a more powerful spread shot.

Making Funko Fusion a third-person shooter is a good idea since the large size of the Funko heads lend themselves well to headshots, especially if you're fond of seeing those large craniums pop off of their respective bodies. The combat is held back by design decisions that can make shooting a chore. One of the big issues has to do with the gameplay camera, which is slung low and close to the character's back. It's fine when you're dealing with action immediately in front of you, but the game constantly has enemies appear behind you during a fight, almost ensuring that there's no way you'll emerge from a fight unscathed. Enemies also have a tendency to pop up out of nowhere, so even if you think an area is clear, there's a good chance the game will make someone appear just to spite you. The game has you reloading a gun, but there's no way to perform a manual reload. The only way to enter an area with a full clip is to dump all of your ammo to force a reload. That is also detrimental in a fight since reloading your gun cancels out the ability to perform a melee attack, again giving enemies a free hit when possible. Then again, these might all be intentional since all of the enemies resort to rushing toward you or hanging back to snipe from afar.

The gameplay loop shares a good deal of features with the plethora of licensed LEGO games, and that's both a good and bad thing. You need to defeat a level with any of the world's characters first before you can replay it with a character from another world. Trying to obtain all of the secret silver crowns requires a ton of hunting around for small and obscure things to shoot or collect, so expect to replay levels multiple times to find them all. You should also expect to bash and shoot everything in sight to get vinyl, the game's universal currency. Backtracking and replaying levels is also a must for unlocking the unlockable characters, and some of those steps for doing so are so obscure that you'll need a guide or walkthrough if you don't want to scrutinize everything to unlock those characters.

The big advantage that Funko Fusion has over the licensed LEGO titles has to do with the bonus unlockable characters. As mentioned earlier, the unlockable characters go beyond the seven main licenses, but it is a shame that only a handful of characters sport any abilities that may entice players to swap over to them. What makes this more appealing is the fact that most of the characters come with their own levels tied to their franchises. Some of those licenses, like Back to the Future, seem like they'd have enough to work with to warrant a full five-level world. Others, like Nope and M3gan, seem perfect for this format because it would be tough to stretch them out to a five-level experience. Nevertheless, the format allows each of those special characters to feel like more than token additions to bolster a roster, and it makes the prospect of DLC feel more exciting since you can possibly get more gameplay to go along with them. That wasn't the case with The Walking Dead DLC, though.

Games like this practically clamor for a multiplayer feature, and while it was initially promised, it isn't available yet. The plan is for online multiplayer to become operational in the future, but it'll be done on a world-by-world basis, starting with Jurassic World. This is the only method that will be available for multiplayer, as a local variant isn't currently in the cards. The reasons for the delay are understandable, as the developers had stated that they didn't want to overwork. However, since the feature is currently missing and a staggered rollout is in progress, the fear is that there won't be many people who would bother trying it out by the time multiplayer is finally available.

Graphically, Funko Fusion gets a number of things right. The Pop figures look exactly like the original toys and feature the rough vinyl texture if you get the camera close enough and at the right angle. The smudges of dirt that accumulate when each figure is at low health is neat, and even the boxes that house each figure sport all of the expected details, including the choking hazard warning in three languages. The environments look spectacular; they are more realistic than a plastic world, while the lighting and other effects enhance the worlds quite well.

Where the graphics begin to fall apart is with the two graphical presets. Performance mode tries to lock the game at 60fps and does a good job accomplishing that for the most part. It tends to be noticeable below that when it plays a cut scene, but it's fine most of the time. The one time it does falter is right after a patch has been implemented; the game thinks it's in Quality mode, so you'll need to go into the options, switch to Quality mode, and switch back to Performance to get the correct setting. Speaking of Quality, the game seems to turn on increased lighting and reflections, but the frame rate suffers greatly during normal gameplay with loads of micro-stuttering. We've seen two patches come in during this review period, and during that time, the frame rate went from headache-inducing to slightly fine and then back to messy. It's the kind of thing that makes the case for a PS5 Pro, as no one would want to play in anything else other than Performance mode when the frame pacing is so erratic in Quality mode.

Like the graphics, the sound is also fine. The sound effects are solid enough, and the music is quite good. The music for the factory tries to go for an epic adventure vibe, and while that might seem silly, it matches with the rest of the game, which either uses tracks straight out of the movie worlds or tracks that are inspired by those films. As for the voices, the game lacks any; this is for the best, as it makes the figures more charming and the humor more universal. Only Eddy has a voice, and that only occurs in the cut scenes to explain his origin. It's decidedly creepy, but the effect would've worked better if he were just as silent as everyone else.

Unlike the actual figures, your enjoyment of Funko Fusion isn't just going depend on whether you like the franchises or characters that made the cut. You have to be a fan of the constant backtracking and revisiting of worlds needed to unlock the better secrets. You need to be forgiving of some of the faults in the combat system. You also have to be fine with this being a strictly single-player game and patient enough to wait for the complete online-only multiplayer experience to be available. If you are, then you'll have fun with the game. Otherwise, you might want to wait to see if patches smooth out some of the existing issues.

Score: 6.0/10