Flying Froggies

The Good
I really thought I'd dislike this game, I was wrong because I really loathe this game, the best bit was when I finished playing it and dropped the CD into the trash.

The Bad
Pretty much everything.

We got off to a bad start when it locked up my pc - but then I was trying to run in high res under WIN XP. The game does run fine on its target platform though so while I am irritated by the forced reboot it's not something that can be reasonably held against the game.

There are a lot of little things, the music relentlessly plinky-plonks away with no purpose other than to tick the 'Has this game got music? box on someone's design criteria checklist. The game's instructions are very basic and don't cover the buying power-ups element that occurs between levels but there's something there so that's another design criteria satisfied, and so it goes on.

There's the feeling of desperation I get when reading the back panel to find out about the game, as though the authors knew this game is rubbish but had to say something. For example a lot is made of the levels being set in the Arctic, a jungle and outer space, ... sorry guys but since when is colouring a level green, white or grey been something special. The same text refers to the baddies you'll face, 'Mutant Pineapples' and 'Psychotic Penguins' are the headliners. Well I've played the game, the penguins are not psychotic, they don't have wide scary eyes and hunt you down with chainsaws, they just wander around on fixed patrol routes which is pretty routine and more robotic than psychotic. To be fair, honest and balanced in this review I have to say I didn't play long enough to see a Mutant Pineapple so maybe they add some drama to this game.

The controls in this game are not easy to use. the player's perspective makes it hard to judge where to jump to collect coins and such and aiming takes a bit of getting used to.

Oh, and a far as I can see there's only ever one frog and it doesn't fly, it can jump but flying - no

The Bottom Line
Personal feelings aside this is a run of the mill game from Webfoot and it's sort of OK in its way but it's boring, there's nothing in this game that's new, interesting, novel or entertaining. It's so like so many of Webfoot's 3D type games almost as though they developed one generic game and just tweaked a couple of settings to get a 'new' game, even the menus are identical to their other games.

In short this feels like this game exists 'because we have to get another game out of the door to hit our development targets', it's a game with no wit, humour, soul, originality, sparkle, fun or quality about it