Genesis

Greendog: The Beached Surfer Dude!

Greendog was fun enough to hold my interest all the way through. It has nice scrolling backgrounds and good diversity. There's just not enough here to make it a big game, but it's got enough good points to make it a worthy title.

When the sun finally sets on the white, sandy beaches, and the soft rhythmic beat of the kettle drums soothes its way into your soul, Greendog is fun little game that is worth the few hours of play required to see all it has to offer. It won't set the world on fire, and anyone looking for profound meaning in it is obviously in need of a vacation themselves. Taken for what it is though, you'll find that the unique visual style, relaxed atmosphere, and goofy premise all combine for an enjoyable romp that's pretty entertaining. Now, where's my lobster bisque?

It's fairly awkward, but Greendog does a lot of other things right. The background music has a relaxing, steel drum, island vibe that I found appealing. Falling in the water will not cost you a life (thankfully), and there are some fast-paced skateboarding stages to break up the platform-jumping monotony. On the downside, when a creature ends up on top of our hero, it's frustratingly hard to escape (or kill) it. Many areas feature annoying red fish that latch onto you and won't let go. The skateboard stages feature some ill-conceived "spring" traps that send you back in the stage, and the underwater stages are predictably slow. Bonus stages put our surfer on an odd, flying unicycle contraption to collect items, but it's hard to control and not particularly fun. In the end, Greendog is a good game for a hot summer day, but its numerous flaws ensured we'd never see a sequel.