Curious George (Game Boy Advance) - Review by Andrew

Introduction

For more than 60 years, children and adults alike have followed the tales of a little monkey named George - known for his fun-loving nature and insatiable curiosity. Following a big screen outing in 2006 the original source material has been dusted off and given a new lease of life. This was an animated feature so a game tie-in was always a certainty but while the US was treated to an 'all formats' release we have been somewhat shortchanged with just a PS2 and this GBA version. The words quality and not quantity spring to mind so let's hope this single handheld version can show the more grown up consoles a thing or two.

Gameplay

The story begins as The Man with the Yellow Hat travels to the jungle in search of an artifact exotic enough to save the museum where he works. Naturally, our inquisitive hero George follows him back to the big city and embarks on a series of mis-adventures. This all takes place in a rich platform environment with George attempting to avoid all manner of nasties and complete his journey in one piece. During this time you'll be forced to pull of progressively more difficult acrobatics in order to progress and every mistake generally means losing some of your energy. This is indicated by three idols and unlike other games of this nature there's no way to increase your health as the game gets more difficult. You can, however, replace lost idols as they are scattered around the levels. Fireflies also populate the levels and amassing fifty of these will reward you with another life, which can come in useful in the trickier sections of the game.

In addition to swinging though the trees there are also a couple of chase levels which challenge Gorge to get to a given destination before a Jeep or Taxi. As with the main game this is nothing new but it does help raise the pulse rate a little especially when you are losing ground against your opponent. Finally there are also a handful of mini-games, which although reasonably enjoyable mostly take their inspiration from the main game (except the rather strange rocket ship outing) but given the lack of battery save you'll need to keep the pass code constantly to hand.

Controls

Because George doesn't actually indulge in any combat the game is focused on collecting, locating the exit and of course, avoidance. Anyone who has played platformers before will know just how important pixel-perfect collision detection is and Torus have provided one of the better examples here which is essential given some of the situations George finds himself in. To top it off, the first few levels are tutorial based with each new move accompanied by some on-screen instructions meaning there's little need to keep referring to the accompanying booklet.

Graphics

Visually Curious George is much like the movie with bold well-designed environments and colors bright and upbeat. The animation isn't bad either with George looking just as fluid as his on-screen counterpart. Fans of the movie will also be delighted with the number of stills telling the game's story in-between each level. The highlight for us though was the ingenious overhead map which not only plots your journey but also allows you to re-visit previous areas in order to tackle a time-trial.

Sound

The music is actually very good with the developers using the GBA's sound chip to produce some very nice jungle inspired tracks. The sound effects aren't too bad either just don't expect too many mutterings from George himself.

Final comments

While Curious George offers nothing new to the platform genre it is very enjoyable and will no doubt delight its target audience and fans of the mischievous monkey. It does have problems though mostly due to the games length and while the developers have attempted to address this with the inclusion of time trials it's unlikely you are going to re-visit the adventure once completed. There's also the unforgivable password save which I honestly believed we'd dumped some years ago and this is even more frustrating given age of the intended audience. It's a shame really because the whole package has been well designed and constructed it's just that it's all over in under four hours as long as you remember the pass code that is.

Pro: Well Designed Colorful Visuals Great Platforming Action.
Con: Far Too Short with Little Variety and an Awful Password Save.
Final score: 6.8

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