ic-games Review - Operation V.I.D.E.O.G.A.M.E - Reviews, Previews and Interviews for PC, Xbox 360, PS2, PS3 and Wii

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Codename: Kids Next Door - Operation V.I.D.E.O.G.A.M.E. (All Formats)

Operation V.I.D.E.O.G.A.M.E

Information
Reviewer: Ian Stanway
Developer: Take2
Publisher: Take2
Reviewed: PS2, Xbox, GameCube
Genre: Platform
UK Release: 02nd Dec 2005
Article Date: 24th Jan 2006
Difficulty: Easy
Retail Price: £19.99
Price Comparison:
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Score Breakdown

Experience:
Game Play:
Graphics:
Sound:
Overall Score: 86%

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Pros

Hilarious script

Fun for adults or kids alike

Solid level design

Cons

At times unforgiving camera

A little tricky in places for very young children

Screenshots

13 of 18

I was a little sceptical as I slotted the Codename: Kids Next Door – Operation V.I.D.E.O.G.A.M.E. CD into the PS2, having never before heard of the Kids Next Door or seen any of their work on TV. My first thoughts on seeing the menu and intro were "What kind of a monkey do they take me for; I’m supposed to review this?" Then I remembered that I get paid peanuts and that I should adopt the attitude of a ten-year-old in the spirit of game reviewing, and pretty soon things began to look up.

A little research later and I now know that the Kids Next Door are a massive hit on the Cartoon Network. You can buy their trading cards, see their movie, buy their action figures… man, how did I miss them? Oh yes, I’m twenty four-years-old: maybe that has something to do with it. No matter though, as even at twenty four and not adopting my ten-year-old alter-ego I still enjoyed this game. Although I can’t really think of anything about Operation V.I.D.E.O.G.A.M.E. (you’ll find many acronyms like this used in the game and they all stand for something amusing and true-to-name) that stands out above the rest of the crowd in originality, looks, or gameplay, there’s just something about it that gels together to leave you feeling impressed and satisfied you’ve just played it.

To bring you up to speed, Codename: KND is about five heroic ten-year-olds who have come together to form a secret team called the Kids Next Door, and they have one dedicated mission: to free all children from the tyrannical rule of adults. Unfortunately this mission seems to be in jeopardy when the kids’ evil nasty foes are freed from prison, and it’s the job of the KND operatives to put them back behind bars on the moon where they belong. The team, going by the codenames Numbuh 1 through to Numbuh 5, have to battle it out using their individual skills to overcome villains from the TV series such as Stickybeard, Knightbrace, Count Spankula (!) and The Toiletnator.

The game begins in the kids’ treehouse with the kids’ chilling, when the alarm sounds. We learn of the breakout but before anyone can do anything about it, The Toiletnator arrives and you’re thrown straight into the – to be honest pretty silly – tutorial mission. The Toiletnator has blocked the treehouse’s drains and wants to flush the kids’ out with sewage, so it’s up to you as Numbuh 1 to defeat him. You get shown the basics of the control system and what the powerups do, before it’s on to the proper missions. The gameplay itself is in fact very simple – you move from one room within the treehouse to another, beating up enemies, collecting powerups and making use of the kids’ abilities until you get to the end of level boss.

There’s not a lot more to it than that but I have to point out at this stage that by the end of the first mission (and as previously mentioned having never heard of KND) I was left feeling like I was a part of a real cartoon. I had been so impressed with the voice acting, the colourful cartooney graphics and the overall slickness of everything so far that I could almost have believed someone if they told me that in fact this was a cartoon and the controller was unplugged.

After completing the tutorial, then, you get to play the first level as Numbuh 1, against Gramma Stuffum and her underlings at her doughnut factory. She’s planning to fill the entire world’s doughnut’s with horrible tasting ingredients such as broccoli – oh no!!! Numbuh 1 cannot punch or kick so instead makes use of his agility and gun-firing ability, getting to use sweetie guns such as the G.U.M.Z.O.O.K.A., which can be upgraded throughout the course of the game by collecting spare parts scattered throughout the levels.

The level design in the game is interestingly creative and a little more than the run-of-the-mill platform levels you often see in games designed for kids. For instance in the first mission, whilst wandering through Gramma Stuffems’s giant oven, you’ll come across a section that is set in a giant vertical vent with a massive fan blowing at the bottom. Rotating platforms around the sides allow you to make your way up the vent by use of use of super high jumps courtesy of the air stream. The camera’s perspective is impressive and gives the appearance you would expect of flying up a huge, long vertical wind tunnel Charlie & The Chocolate Factory-style.

You eventually battle your way to the end of level boss, in this case is a giant robotic baking machine (I think), and you have to fight the boss until its health meter runs out. Standard stuff then, but I quickly came to realise that this boss and all the other bosses in the game each follow a very specific behaviour pattern that is easy to spot but takes a long time to beat. I ended up bored on a couple of bosses, but I imagine that a player of the target age range would find things much more enjoyable.

Once complete and with Gramma Stuffum back behind bars, you get to sit back and enjoy a nice cut scene and then begin a new operation, playing as a new operative. As the levels and operatives are all different, you do get a genuine feeling that you’re experiencing separate episodes of the show.

Numbuh 2 has an interest in aeroplanes and you get to fly the Coolbus across a quasi-3D landscape that alternates between cityscape, forests and the sea. Numbuh 3’s levels make a welcome break from the other operatives’ platform levels. Numbuh 3 is a happy-go-lucky girl who spends most of her time in a perpetual bliss. She can jump higher than the other kids, and makes use of her extra long jumper sleeves to glide through the air. You begin her level gliding down through the treehouse chasing hamsters, another testament to the originality of the games level designers.

Numbuh 4 is a brash young man who is the brawler of the group. He gets to fight with other members of the KND group who have been turned into spank-happy vampires by Count Spankula in one of the games tougher missions. Numbuh 5 is the team’s spy and can do super sneaky work stealthily. She has to negotiate the treehouse’s traps which have been triggered by the treehouse alarm and include electrified floors and robots.

Graphically, things are great. The game developers obviously conversed with the cartoon developers as there is so much attention to detail paid and the characters are true to life. The cut scenes are beautifully done and the mouth synching is great – a trick obviously taken from the cartoons. The environments range from huge sprawling sections to tight claustrophobic sections and are always brightly coloured. Add to that the interesting level design and you have a marvellous 3D cartoon world. Lighting effects are spot on with the several sections of the game taking place in the dark, creating a comic horror effect.

Sound is one of the things that really stands out about the game. There’s no cardboard acting here as the voice actors are of course from the actual cartoons and, coupled with the excellent script writing (I imagine done by the same people who write the dialogue for the cartoons), the dialogue is as over the top as the rest of the KND world, making for a very realistic cartoon experience. The sound effects are great too, either fitting the actions perfectly well to mimic real-life, or for comedy effect. The music isn’t anything forgettable, but it does its job.

The only real bone of contention I had with Operation V.I.D.E.O.G.A.M.E. was the at times painful camera. Although it can be manually manoeuvred, in many situations there is a game-imposed limit on how much the camera can actually be manoeuvred. For the most part this is useful as it means kids won’t be messing up the angle completely, but there were a couple of situations that arose when I wanted to turn the camera around whilst on a moving platform to look where I was going to jump, only for the game to return the camera to it’s previous position when I stopped moving it manually. As early as the first level I ran into problems with this: when I was in the giant oven with floating doughnuts, I kept falling off due to the camera allowing me no sense of depth perception and me falling off the back of the doughnut many, many times.

Other than that though there’s nothing really bad to say about this game. It’s all been done before, I admit. But everything Operation V.I.D.E.O.G.A.M.E. does it does quite well. The level design is good, sound and graphics are great, the game is fun to play, it’s not too boring or repetitive, and there’s even a certain replayability factor in that you have the task of collecting as many rainbow teddy bears per level as possible, to open up secrets such as costume changes and cheats.

So, far-fetched and silly this is, but the important thing is its fun! It doesn’t re-write the platforming genre but it does provide you with a lot of laughs, and comic capers. It’s a definite rental and certainly one to put on your wish list if you’re a fan of the series. You could even think of buying it for your child ;-)

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