Kids Next Door: Operation V.I.D.E.O.G.A.M.E.
How Cartoon Network is destroying kids’ videogames
Tags: Kids Next Door: Operation V.I.D.E.O.G.A.M.E. Categories: PS2 Reviews, Reviews
Posted by Jake McNeill on Feb 16th, 2006
| Title | Players | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Kids Next Door: Operation V.I.D.E.O.G.A.M.E. (title page) | 1 | ||
| Developer | Publisher | Genre | Online |
| Platformer | No | ||
I bemoan the current state of kid’s cartoons. I know it may seem silly and insignificant, but when you grow up with stuff like Duck Tales, Animaniacs, X-Men and Batman: The Animated Series, it’s outright painful to look at some of the stuff that passes for children’s entertainment these days. Maybe it’s nostalgia, I don’t know. But it’s hard to argue with the fact that the old cartoons made better videogames.
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No, no, I think I’m on to something here. Think about it. Compare the old Ninja Turtles videogames to the new ones. Compare X-Men: Children of the Atom to X-Men: Mutant Academy (or worse, Marvel: Rise of the Imperfects). And don’t even try to compare the glut of Sponge Bob Square Pants games to Duck Tales and Rescue Rangers on the NES – that’s akin to blasphemy. It seems that children’s cartoons have lost their interest in quality, and their cynical decline has brought down videogames with them. It is here that we find Kids Next Door: Operation V.I.D.E.O.G.A.M.E.
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Yeah, apparently, in a world where kids act like secret agents to thwart the plans of “evil” grownups, the rule of thumb is acronyms. Really long acronyms used entirely for the purpose of spelling out one word with a series of others to make it seem clever. Toss in villains ranging from an evil lunchlady that tries to force kids to eat vegetables, to a villain obsessed with making the toilets in the kid’s treehouse overflow, and you have an idea of the kind of highbrow stuff we’re dealing with here.
Is it any wonder, then, that the game’s levels are extremely straightforward and simplistic? Is it any surprise that each of the five kids the game has you alternate playing as has only a few basic moves? This game had “mediocre platformer” written all over it before it was even made, and while I strive to never judge a book by its cover, it’s funny that this is a book apparently specifically made to be judged by its cover.
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Sure, there are a few bright spots. Boss fights strewn throughout the game are often quite clever, often having the player perform a series of environment-based tasks to take advantage of an enemy’s weakness. The game also has a few on-rails space shooter sections that are entertaining enough, albeit nothing to replace Star Fox or Panzer Dragoon. Still, while the game shows a few hints of original thought here and there, it’s still largely an uninspired platformer.
This means environments that are less of a world to explore and more of an obstacle course to get through… so you can go to the next obstacle course. It also means an uncooperative camera that more often than not is another burden to wrestle with rather than a tool to help you. And to top things off is boring combat with repetitive enemies that have such mindless AI I ultimately ended up just running past them because… well, why bother?
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Graphically, the game is nothing special, with graphics that rarely impress, character models that are so simplistic they were likely made in a manner of minutes, and a presentation that seems over-reliant on CG that frankly doesn’t look much better than the game’s graphics to begin with. Oh, and the game’s sound is completely forgettable, save for the voice acting, which is stereotypical and annoying.
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KND: OV (Ha! I abbreviated their acronym into an even shorter acronym!) is the type of game that wouldn’t exist without its license, and its license isn’t strong enough to merit a game based on it. This is a game that is obviously intended for fans of the TV show, and from what I can tell, it seems like they deserve it.
| What Works | Score |
|---|---|
|
+ Clever bosses + Decent rail shooter stages |
4.8 |
| What Doesn't | |
|
- Boring and repetitive - Bad camera - Tedious level design - Underwhelming graphics - Annoying voice acting |
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| Under the Shrink-wrap | |
| This game will only entertain fans of the show. And if your kid is one, you don't really care what he watches, huh? | |
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Tags: Kids Next Door: Operation V.I.D.E.O.G.A.M.E.
Posted by Jake McNeill on Feb 16th, 2006 and is filed under PS2 Reviews, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can post a comment, or trackback from your own site.
