Curious george 2006

February 16, 2006 - Curious George has hit store shelves just in time to satisfy the movie release -- though filling the game with useful content seems to be less important than filling the box it's sold in. Curious George attempts to offer a children's game that follows the story arch, while satisfying young gamers. What it has delivered is a passable adventure brought down by sub-par control and surprisingly difficult objectives.

To aid the release of the movie, Curious George has been designed to work alongside the movie plot, using animated sequences and character voices to deliver a similar story, with added adventure. While the game does make good use of the animated sequences, the overall presentation needs to be much higher, and it is noticeable from the very first moments. The entire menu system is bland, using small icons, plain text, and an amazingly tiny portion of the screen. No huge pictures of original art accompany the menus, nor will young gamers see pictorials of their current level for game profiles. In fact, there is very little animation throughout the majority of the game's front end. Better opening presentation can be found on the bulk of GBA games, a shortcoming that is simply inexcusable. Everything up until the actual gameplay looked amazingly weak, and we were convinced they were demo menus.
From the start, the game's design appears to be kid friendly, though it ends up being plagued by difficult objectives, and less than brilliant gameplay. The main premise has players running though the movie's environments, usually to get from start to finish by finding red monkey idols. The game's design actually feels like a simplified Prince of Persia, mixing platforming with climbing and swinging elements. The much needed polish, however, just isn't there. Double jumps have a very small success margin, so younger kids who can't input successive button presses will end up missing a ton of the jumps. In fact, there is hardly any time in the game, even early on, when double jumps aren't needed, so mastery of the timing is essential.

The opening tutorial mode sends players though the jungle in pursuit of the man with the yellow hat, but even in the beginning stages there are death pits. The opening design also makes use of self-driving events, which gives the game a feel reminiscent of Sonic Adventure, though there is literally no way to get out of the event once it has begun. This was actually a great thing to see, since it allowed kids to get the feeling of a ride while still being able to control George. The mixture of ride vs. game seemed right in the tutorial level, though still a bit too hard. Unfortunately, as the game goes on, less and less of these events are used. This was a perfect way to have the game appeal to kids, and it seems like all attempts were made in the first five minutes, rather than the following few hours.
Another major gripe that comes into play is the suffering collision detection. The amount of invisible walls is incredible and collision detection on characters and objects are way off at times as well. George will often stand in mid-air on objects, slide off sections that seem to be flat, and run into pure nothingness while trying to navigate a room full of smaller objects. As a player, you'll never know whether an area can be explored until you actually test your limits.

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