Frogger's Journey: The Forgotten Relic
Score: 30% ESRB: Everyone Publisher: Konami Developer: Konami Media: Cart/1 Players: 1 Genre: Action/ Adventure
Graphics & Sound: Upon purchasing Frogger's Journey: The Forgotten Relic and loading it into your Gameboy Advance, you are treated to a brightly colored and nicely drawn graphic 'cut scene' that is reminiscent of Ninja Gaiden on the old NES. These pictures are lively and explode into your sights. After the intro, I thought that Frogger might be good. I was horribly, horribly wrong. The rest of the graphics in Frogger are just okay. The stages, especially some of the later ones, look pretty good, using little 3-D touches where appropriate. The character models are just mediocre, however, and some don't even look like they belong in the game. The main character, Frogger, is one such example. Every single other character that can talk is made to be a bipedal creature. Foxes, Bears, and even Birds are made to walk upright like normal people. But not Frogger, he's stuck in a perpetual squat and cannot stand, even though he can talk. It wouldn't be such a complaint if it just looked like he might belong there. The sound is mind-numbingly horrible. The music isn't anything special and the sounds are horrible. After hearing Frogger croak every single time he jumped, I just turned the sound down and never, ever turned it back up. You will too. I guarantee it.
Gameplay: The game did what it set out to do. It set out to create a Frogger game that had some kind of story and adds a few adventure, even RPG-like elements to the series. You see, Frogger goes to this town to find his grandfather and while he's there, stumbles on this machine that can give him special abilities. By finding upgrades to this machine, he gets more special abilities, like 'jump longer'. Only by talking with the townspeople can he upgrade his machine and get to new stages. The action stages consist of classic Frogger gameplay, which is to dodge and run away from as many things as possible. Now this was great back in the days of Atari, but now its just boring. The RPG elements add nothing to the game, but random fetch quests. These random quests range from 'go get this from that person' or 'go get that from this person' to 'talk to everyone and see what they are thinking, while I decode this message'. Needless to say, these elements also give you the ability to throw your Gameboy through a window. The action stages are sometimes cleverly designed, and sometimes 'I want to burn my Gameboy in the fiery pits of hell' designed. Normally the game makes you wait until some mushroom or other obscure enemy moves out of the way for you to move. Now this is okay the first time it happens, but having almost an entire stage with those damn mushrooms is just annoying. Definitely not fun. There are also 'boss battles' in Frogger's Journey: The Forgotten Relic. These consist of you running or dodging from the bosses' attempts to squish you with various means. Again, not fun. Another gameplay design that just really annoyed me was that Frogger couldn't swim. That's right folks, frogs cannot swim. In one stage, you must jump on lots of lily pads before they sink into the water. If you go into the water, you die. Now, I would not have a problem with this if it was acid, lava or something dangerous. But water? Since when do frogs not swim? Did I miss that in biology? I think we, as gamers, should come together to petition for a title change. I think we should call the game 'Toader'. That way, at least this piece of crap would make sense.
Difficulty: This is where Frogger Journey: The Forgotten Relics's score really drops. Up until this point, I would be intent on recommending this game for children. With the game's bright graphics and simple gameplay, you would think that children would love this game. The problem is that this game would chew them up and spit them out like they were so much gum. The game is very hard, and it will probably take the average gamer days to get past even the second stage. By the time you're on your 14th or 15th try, those damn mushrooms really get annoying. Then you feel like you're just wasting time waiting for mushrooms to move. I would also warn about playing this game in public. If you do, prepare to get arrested for shouting many expletives and saying the words 'frog' and 'mushrooms' in the same sentence.
Game Mechanics: The controls are simple, for the most part. You move with the arrow keys and you map your special abilities to either the A or B buttons. The L and R buttons control turning in place, but there is a slight problem with this aspect of the controls. Depending on the way Frogger is facing, they rotate him a different way. For example, if Frogger is facing you, L makes him turn left, while R makes him turn right. If Frogger is facing away from you, Frogger turns to his right, which is your left, and vice versa. This can get EXTREMELY confusing, especially with the stages being difficult as they are. Frogger also stops every time he takes a step, even when he's not in an action stage. When he is in the action stage, one press of an arrow key makes him move once, which is desirable, because you don't want him drowning. When he's not in the action stage, if you hold down the button, he moves, then stops, then moves. This can really get annoying, especially if you're going across town. You save by going to the pub and talking to the bear there. This means that you can never save in an action stage! Frustrating to no end. In order to save your progress once you get to an action stage, you must quit the stage, go to the world map, move back to the town and then stop-move to the pub to save. Not what you want to do before turning off a PORTABLE game system. Frogger's Journey: The Forgotten Relic is a game that I would only recommend to bad children this holiday season. Looks like Santa finally found a replacement for coal.
-Vaxeks, GameVortex Communications AKA Joshua Benedetto
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