So, how about that It's Mr. Pants game, eh?

[Aussie Ben]

Well, I bought it a week or two ago, and, in all honesty, I wasn't expecting much. I knew the basic deal - Rare makes mediocre looking puzzle game with Donkey Kong license, Rare loses Donkey Kong license, game disappears for twenty years, game reappears with badly drawn stick figure character at the helm. Still, I picked it up anyway (simply because of the novelty factor of owning a game with Mr. Pants in it).

While the game's not rubbish, it's not stellar either - it's a puzzle game where you have to make rectangles or squares, the smallest size being 3x2 blocks big. There's more to it than that, but my brain isn't working properly at the moment. If it was released without a license (a la the original Tetris) it definitely wouldn't hold up on its own.

But what reels me in is the presentation. All the art is deliberately drawn badly, in an awkward stick figure fashion. Character colours are out of the lines, and everything animates in (as IGN called it) "Squigglevision", where all the lines are jerking all over the place. There's heaps of voice samples from an overly British sounding character (Mr. Pants, presumably) remarking "Splendid!", "Super!" and "I can seee you!" at various points in the menus. Mr. Pants refers to Puzzle mode as "My brain hurts!" and Marathon mode as "Better get fit!". If you go to change your save slot, he exclaims "Leave my pants alone!" Even the manual makes me laugh:

You'll be penalized, and then you'll be in trouble, boy! Or girl. You could be a girl.

Well, it amuses me, anyway.

Sure, only two copies of the game have probably sold at all (one sitting on my desk here), and the game is a nice distraction but nothing groundbreaking, but I like it all the same. Mr. Pants oozes charm, and it'd be great (but incredibly unlikely) to see him in another game.

...and that ends my report from the scene!

[Thrik]

It looks a little basic to invest any money in to me. But then, that applies to handheld consoles too. ;

[manny_c44]

It's sad when a games sole bright spot is presentation. That means there are people willing to see something through, but have no good idea to build it on. This game really has that feeling, the gameplay is pretty much awful, who came up with the rectangle concept? The only fun is in the quips...

Mr.Pants has been seeing lots of ass lately, but sadly, it's just his game.

[Aussie Ben]

Don't get me wrong - I'm not saying it's of Superman 64 quality or anything. I really like the puzzle mode, where you're given a preset board of blocks and a limited amount of blocks to solve it with. I've always liked things like that, like the puzzle modes in Tetrisphere or Tetris Attack.

Wipeout isn't too bad either - you're given three minutes to clear away all the existing mess from the whole board. Marathon would have to be my least favourite of the three, but that's probably because I'm so incredibly crap at it.