	George Of The Jungle
	Developer: Crave Publisher: Ignition Entertainment Release Date: Out Now Players: 1	Words By:
Gamers of a certain age will probably remember something of the cartoon series George Of The Jungle, even if it’s only the theme tune. Well, the King of the jungle and his buddies are back in a new NickToon series, and have come to the DS in platform game form. You play as George and you make your way through the jungle collecting stones to pay for your medical check-up. Sounds simple, doesn’t it? You even have a cast of friends to help you: Ape, Ursula, Magnolia, Shep and Tookie-Tookie bird all help out, and are even sometimes playable characters. The game itself is a side-scrolling platformer, reminiscent of that old favourite Pitfall, featuring a lot of swinging, running, jumping and vine climbing with a bit of switch-activating too, while battling jungle hostiles including bees, monkeys, snakes and crocodiles. The opening level is annoyingly tricky – I can see many DS owners nearly chucking their handhelds ‘out the window’ in frustration. One particular jump has to be pixel-perfect or it’s instant death and back to the beginning of the level. This isn't aided by the fact that George's movement isn't very subtle. So it’s back to the start and the “helpful” pop-in tutorials cannot be turned off, (although you can speed the process a bit with some frantic button presses), making the plod through to the tricky bit a real pain in the neck. But persistence is rewarded – you start to find power-ups (yellow bananas give George a health boost, green bananas make him invincible for 10 seconds and red bananas activate George’s projectile attack). You will also find blue “Yodel icons” – when you find these, tap the icon on the touch screen and George will shout for assistance from one of his jungle friends, maybe a giant bee will give you a ride, Shep will batter a way through to the next level for you or a hippo will carry you safely over a river. If you get stuck you can also find red switches which, when activated, will point you to an alternative route through the level. If you fall on spikes or quicksand you can rescue yourself by pressing B quickly to ‘double-jump’ out of trouble, but it seems odd that falling in the water means instant death every time - apparently George can’t swim! And there are a few too many leaps of faith required for my liking, jumping over water onto a crocodile or platform you can’t see gets tiresome fairly quickly. To give the game some variation there are some vertically scrolling sections; imagine Galaxians with a parrot, or Rambo with an Elephant! Disappointingly, you don’t use the stylus for the main game, just for the mini-games, for example, in the first one, you tap the bees with the stylus to return the honey to them. It’s a shame more of the game doesn’t utilise the touch-screen control, which is the best bit about the DS, isn’t it? This is a game that does get better as you go along. If you can navigate the irritating, ‘sudden-death’ bit on the first level, you’ll find a bright, colourful platformer with enough variation to keep young and old amused. However, you’ll probably find the annoyances will outweigh the fun fairly soon.

Best Bits
- Colourful and faithful to the cartoon series

Worst Bits
- Frustrating leaps of faith cause too many instant deaths
- George can't swim!


by: Debba