There's a rat in the kitchen, what am I gonna do?
From the bustling city streets to the busy kitchens of Gusteau’s five-star restaurant, Ratatouille spans across six game worlds with each mission invariably involving stealing food of one kind or another by traversing the environment with your acrobatic rat. Remy has the skills to be able to run up broomstick handles, leap from pillar to post, climb furniture , swing on ropes, run on rubber balls and even tightrope walk. So,you could say that he's offered a certain amount of freedom throughout each level to test out his array of skills. And, although Rémy does follow a set pathway through each environment, there is a certain level of freedom that can't be found in many other platform games.This freedom allows you to scuttle around under beds and behind crates and dustbins sniffing out many of the collectables in the game. Aside from collecting numerous stars, which give you points that can be spent on unlocking concept art, video clips and numerous (but pretty awful) mini-games, you also need to keep a look-out for other items with which you can furnish your sewer home with, such as bottles and darts. This does add a slight adventuring element and gives you the chance to explore some of the interesting and well designed environments, but ultimately it doesn’t really distract from the fact that you’re repeating the same things over and over again, albeit in a different environment or in a revised scenario. Even the chase sequences, which lend a hand in sprucing up the action to a certain extent, aren't particularly engaging and generally involve running around trying to avoid being caught, whilst regularly bumping into the scenery.
The missions do get repetitive and there isn’t enough depth to the gameplay to keep even a casual gamer entertained for too long, but I can see how the colourful escapades of Remy may keep a youngster entertained for a few days.
You see, the most entertaining aspect of the Ratatouille experience isn’t its scintillating gameplay, but instead kids will probably get the most enjoyment out of the actual scenarios that you find yourself in, such as rafting in an empty can of baked beans or cooking up a recipe. The developers have done a great job at capturing the movements of a rat accurately. Now, I can’t say I’ve ever seen a rat sliding down the guttering, executing a double jump or balancing on a rubber ball, but the animations and interaction with objects are entertaining enough to keep you amused and the blurring effect that comes into play when you run, does its job at creating that feeling of speed.
