Consolation Prize

So this is another sequel to the original arcade classic Frogger? Personally I’d have preferred it if poor old Frogger was left in peace to laze away his remaining days in the swamp rather than have this sequel dredged up from the murky depths. Needless to say I wasn’t that enamoured with this Xbox Live Arcade release.

Trying to build on the simplicity of Frogger we’ve now got a rather hokum story that involves a cute alien called Pico making a crash landing in Firefly swamp. In the process of the emergency landing some parts fell of the UFO and Frogger, being the rather friendly amphibian he is, decides to help poor Pico find the missing items.

Levels now span multiple screens and Frogger must make his way to the goal, and thus the missing part of the spaceship, collecting coins and musical notes along the way and avoiding swamp hazards like snakes and flying fish. Of course the journey involves river crossings, and seeing as Frogger can’t swim these must be navigated by hopping on the moving logs and lily pads as per the classic arcade game.

Negatively I couldn’t stand the music. I’m not sure if it changes further into the game but on the trial level it is on a rather short infinite loop which is the equivalent to aural Chinese water torture that will drive you insane.

Frogger 2 isn’t going to set the world on fire with its looks. In fact it reminded me of something that has been produced from a piece of “game creator” software with rather humdrum object models and a background that looks to have been made up of a limited number of scenery tiles. Some variety in the environment would have gone a long way in helping the overall look of this game.

The actual game doesn’t feel that great to play and has some dubious collision detection. There are plenty of occasions where accurate “hopping” is required to navigate rivers but it seems a bit of a hit-and-miss affair with precision perfect jumping required in some instances but then again it’s more lenient on some occasions. Frustrating.

The controls are fine, but you can’t really go wrong here. Left joystick to hop Frogger along, shoulder buttons to rotate him 90 degrees in either direction, and finally “A” to shoot out his tongue so you can collect items a number of squares away.

I can appreciate that you can’t really do too much with the Frogger franchise but I don’t think the changes to the gameplay in this instance actually add much to overall experience. I’m really struggling to find some positives here, and I hate it when there isn’t an apparent silver lining to a dull cloud, but I’m afraid this is just one of those cases.

Frogger 2 costs 800 Microsoft points and is 78MB to download.