I'll admit it. I'm a fan of the "Fairly OddParents" TV show on Nickelodeon. I always wished as a kid that there was a way for all my wishes to be granted. In the Fairly OddParents universe, ten-year-old boy Timmy Turner has two fairy godparents to help him through life; Wanda, who's wise and nurturing, and Cosmo.....who isn't. Kids are entertained by the action and slapstick humor of the show, but there is also some very witty humor that keeps parents watching the show along with their children. Keeping parents entertained while making the kids laugh is usually what makes a children's show a superior product, and that's what Nickelodeon and THQ hope to cash in on by releasing "Fairly OddParents: Breakin' Da Rules" for the PC.

The premise of the game is pretty simple: Timmy Turner has been saddled with tons and tons of homework to do over the weekend. Making things worse, his parents have gone away for the weekend and left Vicky, evil babysitter of doom, in charge. Being evil by nature, she orders Timmy to do all of her homework as well! Timmy also wants to accomplish good deeds so that he can get his Squirrely Scout Good Deed badge by the end of the weekend, so what's a frustrated kid to do? Why, wish for all the books in the world to disappear, of course! The problem is, the rulebook for fairy conduct (appropriately titled "Da Rules"), is affected by the spell and disappears, too! Wishing "Da Rules" away is a serious fairy offense, so Cosmo and Wanda need to get the book back without using wishes to alert the fairy authorities. If they don't, get the book back in time, they will be sent back for 500 years of fairy retraining! So, Timmy and Co. must use their brains to track the book down.

The game is a scroller game; some missions are side scrolling, and some are top down. They usually involve Timmy controlling a vehicle of some sort, avoiding obstacles and progressing towards his goal. Every mission has a main boss with a specific weakness that you must exploit in order to defeat. To add some spice to the game (or as an excuse for more missions), "Da Rules" is shifting about the space-time continuum through magically created portals. The book appears in some very strange locales, such as a present-day ski slope, the Grand Canyon in the days of the Wild West, in times of yore with medieval knights, even inside Vicky's nose! (Yuk!) In each mission, you have to accomplish a good deed to earn stamps toward your merit badge, collect the lost pieces of "Da Rules" book (in the form of magic dust), and close the magical portal that transports the book through time and space. Once the magical portal opens you need to rush to close it - it only opens for a limited time, and if you miss it, you must start the mission over to close it. In order to retrieve "Da Rules" and win the game, you must accomplish eleven good deeds, collect all the magical fairy dust, and close all the magic portals.

Breakin' Da Rules is a good game to put the kids in front of for a few hours of fun and excitement, but it won't win any production awards. First off, the game is run entirely off the CD, and only the saved games are placed on the hard drive. This makes the performance of the entire game dependent on the speed and transfer ability of your CD drive (a snail compared to the hard drive itself). You can tell that the game was put together rather quickly as well. The cinematics barely have enough animation to be called as such; they're almost very quick slideshows. The game consists of moving your graphical sprite (Timmy) around all the evil obstacle sprites, occasionally destroying some by firing your weapon at them. Hit the obstacles too many times and you must start the mission over. This is strictly a game for the child fans of the show; parents won't really get a kick out of it.

What the game does have is a few humorous moments, mostly involving Cosmo's blatant stupidity. It's also a relatively entertaining family game in an industry that produces far too little of them. So, if you're a kid or you have kids who are really into the Fairly OddParents television show, this is a good buy. Otherwise, you'll probably want to pass this one over.

Our Final ScoreBad

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