Shrek and the gang go to Donkey and Dragon's home one day and find out that Donkey has been left with their over-active, fire-breathing offspring, the flying dronkies. So before the gang can have some peace, they need to tell the kids a few bedtime stories and get them to sleep. Thus begins
Shrek Super Slam's Story Mode.
After the game's intro, you will move from fight to fight, each battle having a different setup story, which makes this mode have no real overarching story that explains why you are fighting who you are (like other fighting games do). Instead, the storytellers just set up a situation where, for example, Gingerbread Man and Puss-N-Boots go head-to-head as sheriff and outlaw, or where Donkey must face down Prince Charming or else be arrested. You would think this would make for a somewhat disjointed gameplay experience, but it seems to work better than trying to come up with one reason to have everybody fight everybody else (like the standard "you have to fight in a tournament to save the world" scenario). It is in Story Mode that you will be able to unlock new costumes for your various usable characters. These costumes can be used in Melee Mode or Mega Challenge Mode.
So how do you get new characters? That's what Mega Challenge Mode is for. In this mode, you will move across a board trying your hand at a wide variety of different missions. You will have to do everything from throw a certain number of enemies into the fire or off a cliff, to trying to Slam multiple opponents at the same time, to breaking or protecting a certain number of objects. Each place on the board that you complete will yield you one or more Mega Points. These points are what you use to unlock items in other modes. This is a huge mode and there were plenty of times that I found this mode more fun than the game's Story Mode.
Melee lets you go up against a maximum of three opponents. These enemies can be either computer or human (on a network) controlled. Here you use the various characters, outfits, and locations that you have unlocked in the other modes to fight it out in a no-holds-barred melee battle.
One of the things that makes melee fighters different from other fighting genres (besides the fact that you typically have more than two people in the arena at one time), is the abundance of weapons and environmental hazards. Here you can use anything from giant wooden heads to large chunks of ham to beat your opponent into submission. As for the environmental hazards, these include a gingerbread car that goes flying across the screen at Gingerbread Man's place as well as large balls of fire at Dragon's castle.
