As far as the sound is concerned, Madagascar 2 is solid but yet again not the best we have seen in recent months. First the negative, I have to admit I was disappointed that the voice actors from the movie such as Ben Stiller, Chris Rock and David Schwimmer are nowhere to be heard in the game. This would have skyrocketed production costs however other recent Activision movie based games such as the Bee Movie Game have been able to secure the films main voiceover talent. Alex does not sound like Ben Stiller whatsoever. It is not that he sounds horrible; in fact the Stiller replacement does a decent job as do the other voice actors. Yet, not hearing the main actors from the movie somehow cheapens the experience and I could not help but think I was not getting the ‘real deal’ as it just did not seem authentic. In any event, the in-game dialogue and humour is very effective. Lots of the scenes are funny and will entertain audiences of all ages. Both my daughter and I got a kick out of King Julien. On a technical note it was also nice to see that the dialogue was not out of sync with the characters mouth movements.

As far as the soundtrack is concerned, Madagascar 2 is pretty much forgettable. So forgettable, I can’t even recall the majority of the tunes. The music is quite repetitive and loops over and over. On a more positive note, buried in the game in the tournament mode are a couple of little tunes in the Volcano Rave mini-game. These tunes are catchy and quite good in this dance and rhythm mini-game. Why this type of music is not used more often in the game leaves me puzzled.

I also had issues with the games varying volumes from cut-scene to in-game play. The cut-scenes were quite a bit quieter than the in-game action. It actually had me adjusting the volume on my remote on a frequent basis. I could not help but think a few more weeks in the sound room could have fixed this problem.

As for the rest of the in-game sound effects, they are very strong. The fighting sequences feature excellent battle sounds and the breakable objects shatter quite loudly. There are actually a couple of times throughout the game that my subwoofer actually shook the floor and rattled the pictures on the wall. Overall, the audio is average and I can’t help but feel there is still room for improvement.