We hate it when a game developer takes a classic franchise we grew up with and trashes it. Zen Studios is guilty with its Xbox Live Arcade release of Rocky and Bullwinkle. What should've been a fun, easygoing mini-game compilation is anything but. It's more like a virtual example of how NOT to do one.
In the game, you go through a series of episodes featuring stars from the classic cartoon, including Rocky, Bullwinkle, Boris and Natasha, Peabody the Dog and Sherman, among others. Each offers a variety of mini-games, in the same tradition as Nintendo's WarioWare games. The gigantic difference here, however, is that the WarioWare games are fun, where Rocky and Bullwinkle's are not.
This rabbit is stunned by Rocky and Bullwinkle's lack of entertainment. Flabbergasted, in fact.
Case in point – one game requires you to fly through space in a rocket, picking up fudge cakes while avoiding asteroids and going to the moon. It's never really explained why you're going to the moon, much less why you need so many fudge cakes to get there, but never mind. You're never told which is which, and crash before you have a chance to distinguish the two.
Another game that comes to mind is Bullwinkle's mind-numbing juggling game. You have to tap the right and left triggers in conjunction with each other to keep the balls in the air. The problem, however, is the timing. Before you even catch a ball, you find yourself missing the opportunity by a split second, and losing as a result.
These are just two examples. Most of the games are awful. They also seem like missed opportunities, like with Bullwinkle's dart-throwing game. Rather than just aiming the cursor over the bulls-eyes and making him throw automatically, wouldn't it have been more fun to provide a moving cursor and get a button-pressing system down? Oh well, too late now.
If you're looking for a classic presentation, you won't get it. The closest thing the game offers from the cartoon is a series of seconds-long snippets of some chaotic action after you complete each mini-game. Otherwise, you'll have to endure several horrible Flash animations showing characters stiffly moving back and forth as if they were cardboard cut outs. Don't look for any variety in the sound department, either. All you'll find here are some completely bland music pieces and random, mindless voice samples. We were only about five minutes into a game session and wanted to kill both the flute player and Bullwinkle, who kept reminding us that he is "Bullwinkle...the moose". Compared to Bullwinkle the oral hygienist, perhaps?
Outside of the episodes, there are few rewards. The game "supports" Xbox Live Vision camera, but we use that term loosely. Most of your motions are so poorly read that it's not even worth bothering with. As for multiplayer, you can play with up to eleven others off-line in a Hot Seat mode. This brings up two quandaries. First, the game doesn't support Xbox Live, but it's not like subscribers to the service know who Rocky and Bullwinkle are to begin with. Second, you'll never find eleven people who want to play this wreck.
A couple of weeks ago, Zen Studios released a Rocky and Bullwinkle downloadable table for its more superior Xbox Live offering, Pinball FX. Our suggestion is to go with that game instead, rather than this 800-point failure. Someone should've stopped this game's conception.
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