Gaming Smack

Ugh.

I really wanted to like this game.  I’d heard good things about the way it expanded the kid-friendly 3D platforming experience with vehicle building.  I’d been a fan of some prior Rare games, including Donkey Kong Country (SNES) and Konker’s Bad Fur Day (N64, XBX).   But, that didn’t happen.

They lost me in the first hour.  It’s bad enough that the very poorly conceived story relies very heavily on a knowledge of the prior games (which I haven’t played).  But when the presentation of that story is interrupted every 45 seconds by another baby step along the tutorial path, it gets diced up to the point of incoherence.

The graphics are an eye-poking blend of the same candy-color palette you’ve seen in every other kids platformer (like the first iterations of Spyro, Ratchet & Clank and Jack and Daxter) grinding against the photorealistically bump-mapped texture sandwiches that most developers equate with high production values lately.

Rare is a British developer.  Allow me, then, to invoke a quote attributed to Winston Churchill:  ”This soup has no theme.”

Smack Verdict:  PASS