George of the Jungle and the Search for the Secret

With summers come summer holidays; with summer holidays come a prolonged period off from school or college. This means that along with the standard summer blockbusters, a load of videogames will fall onto the market that will keep the younger end of the gaming spectrum entertained. More often than not, these games are nothing more than franchise games and are usually left aside and forgotten about; however, does George of the Jungle and the Search for the Secret fall into this category?

The basic story around George of the Jungle and the Search for the Secret is that George is hunting down some research pages for his friends so that he is able to help cure Ursula and Magnolia of their phantom illness. This cues eleven levels of poor level design, random glitches and combat that an eight year old would find easy.

In regards to the presentation of George of the Jungle, it’s of a decent quality. The backgrounds of the jungles and various levels are all very bright, distinct and vibrant. Nothing really blends into one another, and everything is separate and clean. The characters in the background appear fairly frequently, and these inhabitants will occasionally attempt to do something amusing; however, most of the time they are nothing more than little 2D splodges moving around. When static, George and the other characters actually look like the characters from the Nickelodeon TV series, which the game is loosely based around. However, when George is moving -- which is essential for most videogames -- he looks like nothing more than a few colours being moved randomly across the screen.

The presentation aside, the controls for this title are appalling. The developer has clearly tried to use some of the Wii Controls to the game’s benefit; however, all that’s happened is that the game has ended up being floaty and there’s actually very little control over George or any of his attacks. Not to mention the fact that to launch certain attacks, the player has to waggle the Wii Remote in certain ways. This would not be a problem, but these options feel tacked on, and to make anything recognised, the player would need to move the controllers around like a kid on a sugar high.

The biggest problem with George of the Jungle is the lack of any collision detection. Understandably, the game is fairly easy -- it should be, as it’s aimed at young children, not twenty and thirty-something reviewers. But designing a game so that the attacks won’t hit enemies does not make the game harder – it makes it less fun.

There are many problems with the collision detection, with issues such as attacks simply not hitting enemies even when George is directly in front of the enemy to much bigger, basic flaws such as enemies being protected by poor programming. An example of this was encountered when trying to kill a certain boss -- it's next to impossible because the area that he is in has a major glitch giving the boss character protection from all attacks.

Naturally, humour is used throughout the game, just like the TV show. Although, just like the TV show, the humour requires no thinking and really is aimed at people with limited cranium capacity. Children may be young -- some may be stupid -- but they’re not devoid of humour. Jokes about people’s derrieres are neither funny, nor appealing – it’s just embarrassing. Even for an eight year old.

Final Verdict - 3/10
George of the Jungle may be aimed at young children, and their requirements may be different from that of a videogame reviewer, but this is just nothing more than sloppy. If you count up everything that needs to be left aside or missed out, the only thing left is the box.