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I justified my purchase of The Wild Thornberrys Chimp Chase
for Gameboy Advance by reminding myself that it was cheap; I found it at a local pawn shop that I haunt, looking for inexpensive movies, videogames, and movies to try. In reality, I bought it because I'm sucker for anything from the Nickelodean "golden age" that produced Hey Arnold!
, Rugrats
, Jimmy Neutron
and, of course, The Wild Thornberrys
. I knew it could be bad, but I just had to try it...Thank goodness it was cheap because buying it was a mistake and playing it is a special kind of torture.
This is the bugger I'm talking about it. Memorize the culprit's face so you can avoid it at all costs. (Unless, of course, you're a collector. Still, if you play it, expect frustration.)
In this 2001 (Metacritic) sidescroller, Darwin, the Thornberry family's beloved chimp, is kidnapped by the show's recurring villains, Kip and Biederman, and you have to get him back. To do this, you must journey across multiple continents, play as different Thornberrys, and complete quests that lead you closer to finding your friend.
To be fair, the concept isn't terrible. It isn't great either, but I do like getting the opportunity to play as different characters. I also like the graphics, which are in the quintessential Wild Thornberry's style. They weren't trying to be realistic, so they didn't have an opportunity to become dated.
The game play is infuriating, though. Gah.
It's Torturous Because It's Picky:
You spend the first couple of levels in a forest canopy, swinging across vines and climbing tree trunks, which would be fine if it wasn't stupidly easy to fall to your death. Your character doesn't automatically grasp tree trunks or stationary vines, so if you forget to hit the up button when jumping, you fall to your death. Also, the required timing when jumping between swinging vines is very picky, making it very easy to fall to your death. And when you fall, there are usually not ledges to land on or trees to grab; you're just a goner.
When you throw fruit at enemies as Eliza, you must be exactly the correct distance from the enemy, which is, of course, within its firing range. Therefore, you have to bumble around finding the correct spot, all the while getting pummeled by a projectile, that is mysteriously able to fly horizontally for many feet.
And Because You Don't Get Enough Health or Lives for the Difficulty Level:
And assuming you don't fall to your death, you can endure very few hits before you die of injury. Sometimes you start out with two life bars (they're actually little medicine bottles...I think.) and sometimes you start out with three, (I haven't figured out how that works yet.) which are difficult to replenish because there are very few items available.
You get four lives, which sounds generous, but really isn't when you consider that easy-to-make missteps, (like falling out of a tree in a jungle level) usually results in instant death. In fact, it's so infuriatingly insufficient that I'm completely stuck. On level 2. Of a game made for eight year-olds. It's true that I'm not a great gamer, but I'm not so bad that I routinely get stuck on the second level of a game for eight-year olds. There's got to be something wrong with a game if that happens.
And Because the Game is Glitchy or Just Weird:
Could this be because the cartridge is 16 years old? Yes, it could be. It could also be because the programming is a little weird. At one point, I jumped up to catch a swinging vine, missed the vine, and ended up stuck. I couldn't tell if I was holding onto the top of the vine, which wasn't swinging, or if the game was glitching and I was holding onto nothing. (If it's the first one, see reason one. Why on earth would a game let you grab too far up on the vine, but not let you slide down?) Either way, my only option was to jump off and, you guessed it, fall to my death. Another time, the game froze while it was transitioning into a cut scene and I had to turn the DS off. (I was playing using a reverse compatible DS Lite.) Thankfully I was close to the beginning of the level and lost minimal progress.
In Short:
Don't fall for the nostalgia trap. This game is terrible, and you shouldn't waste your money on it.
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