 Review By: Matt Flanagan |
Developer: | THQ |
| Publisher: | THQ | |
| Genre: | Adventure | |
| ESRB: | Everyone | |
| # Of Players: | 1 | |
| Online Play: | No | |
| Accessories: | Unlock secrets with GBA version | |
| Buy Now: |   |
Drake & Josh: Talent Showdown is another licensed title based on a children's television show on a system already full of them, and it's everything you'd expect from that type of game. That is, it's not very original or fun to play, and feels like it took a month or so to program.
Now, I don’t watch Drake & Josh, so I'm going to have to draw my conclusions about the characters from the game. From the game, I've come to assume that in the show Drake thinks he's really funny and cool but makes a lot of really bad jokes, and Josh is pretty much useless and inferior to Drake in every way. In the game you're allowed to change between the characters, but since Drake is faster and has a weapon (which Josh lacks) there's really no reason to ever switch from him.
You start off in a generic school setting where you're asked to wander around looking for the key to open a door that leads to somewhere apparently important. Once you complete this task, you’re rewarded by getting to do the exact same thing again and again, and you'll quickly realize as you walk around completing an endless string of fetch quests that you’ve experienced basically everything that this game has to offer in the first five minutes. The obvious lack of difficulty is enhanced by the fact that you're constantly being told where you need to go (not that there's really any areas to explore or get lost in anyway).
Now, there'd be no challenge here at all if you were allowed to wander empty hallways unhindered, so there to stop you are a bunch of identical “jock” characters who upon seeing you will sluggishly chase you and (if you make no effort to escape and they catch you) grab your arm and repeatedly pull on it until you die. To escape this you need to rub the stylus back and forth on the DS screen, and if you can accomplish this extremely difficult and exciting task you’ll be free before you lose any noticeable amount of health, therefore reducing the game’s only enemy to something that’s more of a pointless annoyance than an actual hindrance.
Graphically the game is inexcusably ugly. I know we're not dealing with a graphical powerhouse in the DS, but honestly the visuals here are literally ham-handed enough to make you laugh out loud at times. The character portraits are drawn horribly and look so little like what they’re supposed to look like that you’ll have no idea who they are until they call each other by name. NPC portraits all look pretty much the same except for a few hair color and clothing changes, the actual character models just look sloppy, and objects are liberally copied and pasted through every level in an effort to throw the monotony of the whole thing in your face.
Now, at some point I'm sure whoever was responsible for this monstrosity realized that nobody would be tricked into thinking that wandering around ugly bland hallways was anything short of pure boredom, so partway through the game there are some mini-games thrown in where you actually get to play through the titular "talent showdown," but all this really does is replace one boring activity with another as you simply trace patterns on the screen.
Now, I realize I'm probably outside the target audience for this game, but i know junk when I see it. I don't expect anything challenging and deep here, but i have a feeling Drake & Josh: Talent Showdown is going to fail to entertain even the youngest and most devoted fans of the show. There's not a lot to do here, it's bland and easy to the point of being harder to lose than to win. No effort was spared to save time, and so things are reused at every opportunity. In the end, this game is a total negative and a complete waste of time.
Bottom Line:
This is a game that’s hoping to sell on name recognition alone, and anything contained beneath the licensed name of the game is just filler. This is a situation that’s unfortunately very common, with the publisher hoping kids won't notice that the game is dull, plodding, and pointless before their friends buy it as well.
| Pros: | Cons: | Final Score: |
|---|---|---|
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| 1.7 |
Posted: 2007-11-12 20:30:12 PST