Funko Fusion is an incredibly eclectic game. Its clearest touchpoint is the LEGO franchise, but with a more bizarre sense of humour and slapstick antics, it’s also much stranger and far more compelling.
It should be understood that Funko Fusion is clearly a game born of marketing – as you travel through its world, you’ll find tiny replicas of real-life collectible Funko Pop Vinyls, and other Funko-owned products. There’s even in-game stalls dedicated to the Funko-owned Loungefly, and tiny little backpacks you can whack for collectible gems.
Funko is everywhere you look here. Characters are all designed as Pop Vinyls, of course, and there’s plenty of little in-jokes for collectors and naysayers alike – dialogue refers to the toys as being “dead eyed” and character heads can pop off with little damage. If you do take damage in certain stages, your vinyl will literally melt off, and you’ll be controlling a big-headed skeleton.
Despite the overt marketing, Funko Fusion maintains a bright, over-the-top sense of fun, thanks to that aforementioned humour, and worlds that feel rewarding to explore – as long as you don’t mind collect-a-thons. In my preview, I was able to access the Hot Fuzz and Jurassic World stages of the game, both of which were linked together by a loose narrative.
Freddy Funko, long-time mascot of the Funko brand, is forced to face off with his evil counterpart Eddy, who wields a corrupting goo that can transform Pop Vinyls into evil beasts. My preview picked up some time after the introductory chapter for Funko Fusion, so there was a lack of context in my first steps – but context hardly matters when you’re immediately presented with a towering boss fight against a corrupted Fox Pop Vinyl, who bursts into multiple collectible parts on defeat. You just pick up your shotgun, and get on with it.
All this was completed as Nick Frost’s Danny Butterman from Hot Fuzz, for that added sense of abstraction.
Lacking the context, this was a wild start to my Funko Fusion adventure – although the discombobulation largely settled as the game’s main stages unfolded. When tackling each themed stage, you’ll enter chapter-based levels that loosely adapt the events of a particular franchise, with a sprinkling of evil Eddy’s twists.
Hot Fuzz isn’t my favourite of the Cornetto Trilogy (that honour goes to The World’s End, which is criminally underrated) but it served as a lovely, silly backdrop for my next steps. Entering a franchise world, you’ll be able to explore semi-open scenery filled with familiar locations and characters, each given the Funko Pop Vinyl treatment.
In Hot Fuzz, you can embody any of the main cops from the film, and then set about your day restoring order in the town of Sandford. That requires exploring every nook and cranny, defeating goons that pop out (yes, a pun – I’m sorry), and solving the mysteries of crime scenes. Along the way, you’ll grab a variety of collectibles to unlock gem chests, hit destructible objects to gather gems, and spot a range of Easter eggs along the way.
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Funko Fusion does feel pretty smug in this approach, almost demanding a point and laugh, and your stomach for fandom in-jokes will determine how this approach sits with you. Personally, I think we should kill the concept of cringe, and indulge in our favourite properties with abandon. Life’s too short for shame, and I had a great time stumbling across those Easter eggs.
In the Hot Fuzz level, for an example, you can find a tackle shop that leads you to a secret Jaws stage (although I wasn’t able to access it during my preview).
Funko Fusion doesn’t shy away from damage
Even in its smugness, Funko Fusion can be delightful – particularly as it adapts over-the-top film moments, and makes them even more over-the-top. Watching Timothy Dalton’s Simon Skinner get skewered by a miniature church steeple, and then spend the rest of the main boss fight dangling there with his little feet kicking was a particularly neat touch – if a little gruesome.
And that’s something that should be mentioned: Funko Fusion is surprisingly gore-heavy. While everything is given a Funko lick of paint – and it’s not overtly damaging when everyone is a semi-immortal Funko Pop Vinyl being – you’re frequently coming across splats of bright red blood, having your face melted off, and watching your friends dissolve into purple goo. There’s shades of Roger Rabbit in Funko Fusion‘s approach to cartoon violence, in that it’s not as appropriate for all-ages as its aesthetics may suggest.
Funko Fusion is far more adult in approach to its source material, much more so than its LEGO spiritual predecessors. That’s also in regard to the source material for each level, with most of the properties chosen for Funko Fusion representing older audiences. The Thing, M3GAN, and Chucky being included should clue you in, for a start.
Hot Fuzz was a fairly gory chapter, despite its cartoonish nature. Jurassic World was slightly more all-ages friendly, but you’re still dealing with dinosaurs who bite heads off and attack you at a moment’s notice. Frankly, I’m not a fan of the Jurassic franchise, for the same reason I don’t enjoy kaiju films: anything significantly larger than me shouldn’t exist. (Tall people are fine, though.)
Still, the design of the Jurassic World level reflected a virtual theme park, and I definitely enjoyed that aspect of exploration. In each corner, there was some cool little installation to explore, or a new dinosaur to rescue, with each task hauling me along an adapted story.
As a taster of two worlds I’m not particularly enamoured with, my Funko Fusion preview still had me excited for more. The world of The Thing should be extremely fun in Funko form, and I’m also keen for adventures in The Mummy, The Umbrella Academy, Scott Pilgrim, Back to the Future, and hopefully there’s some classic Universal Monsters appearing, too.
Each level in my Funko Fusion journey was far more robust than I expected, with hours of gameplay in Hot Fuzz and Jurassic World. Should other levels maintain the same level of detail and chapter-based structure, I’d expect Funko Fusion to be a much, much longer game than initially anticipated. You can also spend plenty of time wandering its many worlds to uncover new characters and easter eggs, which should satisfy the more devoted pop culture fans.
The feeling of seeing these worlds adapted to animated Funko Pop Vinyl is still wild, and that feeling never really goes away as you play, but it’s in that sense of bizarreness that Funko Fusion is most enjoyable. So far, this is an odd little game – but one that’s extremely, strangely compelling in its oddness. It remains on the very top of my most anticipated list for 2024.
Funko Fusion launches for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC on 13 September 2024. It launches for PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch on 15 November 2024.
A preview code was provided by the publisher for the purposes of this review.
