Stuart Little 2

Help Stuart navigate his way around in a world of big people, complete with all the hazards that a little mouse would normally encounter, plus some pretty unusual ones, due to Stuart's predilection for speedy travel in various vehicles.

Stuart Little 2 is an unusual platform game designed for young players, in that many of the levels deviate from the norm found in most games of this type. Creations, the game developer, took special care in developing levels that offset the jumping and running found in the platform levels, and which feature a wide variety of gameplay elements. Some levels include racing in a car or a plane, traveling down a drainpipe armed only with a flashlight, and floating through the air with a balloon. Each level is designed to be as simple as possible for young players, but not at the expense of entertainment or challenge. Unfortunately, despite this evident desire to be child-friendly in atmosphere, the interface itself leaves a lot to be desired, and will end up frustrating many of the kids this game is aimed toward.

Upon beginning play, two levels of difficulty are offered, normal and easy. The easy mode offers a directional hand that shows players which direction to go, and also sound effects when a box is pushed to the correct location. The first game level offers no problems in navigation, and is easy to traverse, but things soon begin to get pretty sticky. The second level features Stuart driving a plane in Central Park through rings of stars, which begins enjoyably, but soon nosedives into problems. This level will need to be driven through several times before kids will learn just how close they can come to the bushes, and which rings are necessary and which ones should just be given up on. The third level is another platform level set in the school and is easy enough, but the fourth is a killer! Actually, it's a pretty fun racing game, but one that has some problems, namely the car can get stuck very easily, and a timer, which shouldn't even be in a children's game. The timer gets reset at certain checkpoints, but it doesn't help; the car gets stuck frequently during the first several runs of the course, and players will end up watching helplessly as the timer runs quickly out. Once the course is learned, it's much easier and much more fun.

Almost every level is similar: what begins as fun, ends up maddening, because of constant dying and restarting over due to problems of overly sensitive obstacles, control issues in jumping from platform to platform, too much blind jumping, and in one particular level, really bad "touch" detection. This level, the sixth, proved to be our nemesis, and we found it impossible to complete. I ended up punching in password numbers at random (the password function is simple, and offers a combination of four numbers from 1-8) to see if I could get to another level, and luckily for me, only a few tries were necessary, and I moved on to the next level. This sixth level involved hanging on a line down a dark drain, using a flashlight to scare off spiders. The flashlight was difficult to direct with the control pad, but the main problem was often the spiders wouldn't react to the "light's touch" and would get Stuart anyway. There were less lives offered in this level, too.

Subsequent levels were a little easier, but each still had its own problems. Level eight was difficult, because of too many blind jumps, which resulted in Stuart's balloons getting pricked from falling on top of sharp objects, which in turn meant game over and begin again at the beginning of the level. The platform levels were the easiest, but even these had some problems, mainly in jumping: I can't tell you how many times I either fell short when jumping, or jumped too far and fell off the other side.

Besides the interface issues, the game is charmingly drawn and very enticing. Stuart is adorable, and the voice acting is very nice. All the backgrounds are drawn from the movie, and make great use of the GBA's color capabilities. The sound is especially good, much better than most GBA games, and will have toes tapping.

The levels are designed well for the most part, long enough to challenge, but not long enough to bore. The mix of various gaming styles between platform levels is nicely integrated, and is a refreshing change from many kids' handheld games. However, the age that this game is obviously aiming for may find the whole experience too tough to handle. My daughter, who is twelve, is enjoying this game, but many twelve year olds will be a hard sell for Stuart Little. Once the levels have been played and practiced, the game is much easier and more fun, but getting through the levels at all the first time may prove to be more than some can handle, especially the spider/drainpipe one.

Overall, this is a decent children's game, that could have been a great children's game if the interface had been designed better. In the words of a former coworker, "the interface IS the game", too bad in this case, as this game has a great premise and nice elements, which are outweighed by the difficult interface.