Summing it up
One thing that has been done reasonably well in George of The Jungle is the implementation of the controller. The game utilises both the Wii-mote and the Nunchuck and with the latter you can flick it dodge roll and use it to move George left and right. The Wii-mote is used to pull off special moves, such as vine swings, the air stomp, which involves pressing jump twice and then bringing the controller down in a sweeping motion, the dodge roll and the wall jump.All of these moves work well, are intuitive to execute,extremely simple to learn and in the case of the 'air stomp' are fun to do ; it's only really in combat where the controllers haven't been used to their full potential. Rather than using just the 'B' button to attack and string together combos there was a whole host of options at the developer’s fingertips that would have made things more exciting,but they've looked at none of them.
Click for larger imageThe George of the Jungle series on Nickelodeon is aimed towards 6-11 year olds, so I presume the game is aimed at the same crowd. In reality, I can't imagine anyone over the age of 8 putting up with the mind-numbingly simple platforming and annoying bosses, however 6-8 year olds will probably still get a smidgen of satisfaction out of playing with the lovable George, meeting the characters from the show and singing along to the catchy theme tune;that's not too patronising is it?
Pros
Simple to play, controls take about 5 seconds to pick up
Nice animations and illustrations
Cons
Suffocatingly linear
Boss battles are too hard
Even the ideas for the mini-games have been copied
Combat is as bland as it gets.
One for youngsters only and even they may get frustrated with some poor game mechanics.
