Introduction: George of the Jungle is based off of a fairly popular kids cartoon series. What pops into your head when you think of 'kids cartoon tie-in'? Well, if you didn't think of the words 'excellent', 'good', 'average', or even 'poor', you're probably pretty close to the truth. Because this is a game of the worst kind - designed to trick poor, gullible parents into picking it up for their kids without realising that this game isn't fit for a bin.

GamePlay: George of the Jungle is a completely unabashed platformer, and an awful one at that. You're stuck on a single path, which will sometimes send you below ground, or up onto a platform. And yes, occasionally, you swing on a vine! It's a breakthrough in gaming experience!

Combat is, of course, equally dull and un-inspired. Press B to punch. Press B three times to do a combo. Of course, if you're feeling especially brave, you can jump in the air and waggle your controller. This kills most of the enemies in a single hit. What's more, because the environment is so 2D, there's absolutely no skill, challenge or interest in fighting. You punch them, they punch you. You punch them again. They die. Repeat this process many, many times and you'll finish the level!

Of course, there are also the bosses. Where the rest of the games combat is mind numbingly dull, the boss fights are also... mind numbingly dull. The first boss is pretty much the same as every other enemy, except that it'll jump out of the way three times before you can finally get the fight over with. They're often very simple, presenting no real challenge, except for when the game refuses to accept that you've completed the criteria.

This leads us nicely on to another awful problem. The game is rendered almost unplayable in parts due to sloppy coding. Sometimes, you won't double jump, plunging you to your death, meaning you've got to spend even more time playing the game. Other times, the game won't recognise that you've fulfilled a criteria, particularly in boss fights, and refuses to let you carry on, forcing you to restart the entire level. One time, I crouched under a rock in order to reach a collectible, only to find myself stuck, again forcing me to reload the level. The second time, I was more cautious, but I still managed to get stuck under the rock. I couldn't bear to play the level again, and by waving the controllers around a bit, I managed some kind of roll manoeuvre which I hadn't even learnt yet.

And then, to add insult to injury, if you fall foul of a glitch and you're forced to restart, you'll have to watch each and every cut scene again. That's annoying enough if it's just a simple 'how to jump' video, but when it's minutes of your life draining away watching awful twaddle about medicine research being lost, it's unbearable.

Control: The basic controls, are ... basic. A to jump, B to attack. I've got no problem with that, it's probably one of the best bits about the game. What I do have a problem with is some of the simply awful movement controls that feel as if they've been tacked on as an afterthought. Most of the time it simply reduces to waving your arms and feeling like an idiot. I honestly can't see why they even bothered to include this, as I don't feel more involved, and I'm certainly not having fun.

Graphics: Let's be honest. The graphics don't look very good in screenshots, and they're a hell of a lot better than the actual game graphics. The character models are horrendous, not everyone moves their mouth when talking, and barely anything is animated and the few things that are all appalling. Sometimes there are tantalising paths away from your set track, but the developers have simply put them in there to confuse you. Backgrounds unfortunately continue the trend. Occasionally you'll see a monkey bobbing up and down, but other than that your game environment is woefully static and dull. The lack of polish in this game is shown also with some of the still images used, the little intro shown when you open your game channel for example. It's a fairly simple graphic, and that's fine, but it's badly pixelated. Why, why on earth did they decide to release a game that had a pixelated intro? There's no way that they didn't notice, so it has to be laziness, which is completely unforgivable.

Sound & Music: The voice acting of the characters is decent, and as far as I can tell it fits in with the show nicely. To add on to this continuity, the music is also the same as the show, but it'd have to be a really, really massive fan to think the game was redeemable because of some decent music. However, as you're loading into the start screen, the worst abomination in music history begins to be played. A George of the Jungle rap song. It was a struggle to get over this as I played through the first level, the phrases playing over and over in my head. I don't think that I will ever fully recover from that experience.

Final Comments: If you haven't grasped it yet from this review, please, don't buy this game. Don't give the developers the satisfaction of even a penny in their pocket, because they should be ashamed of themselves for releasing this awful thing.

Pro: Some okay audio. If you were to buy this, you'd then be able to throw it away!
Con: Everything else, including, but not limited to:
Awful story.
Awful humour.
Awful gameplay.
Awful graphics.
Awful glitches.
Final Score: 1.0

Reviewed by: Douglas Andrews