Game #1001: Franklin - A Birthday Surprise

  This ain't a Ninja Turtle... right?

 I guess I should explain why Franklin: A Birthday Surprise is here, huh? Well, I didn't use to watch the series perse, but, believe it or not I used to be an early bird, and every morning between 6-7 AM this show would be on TV while I waited for my toons to start. And as someone that runs on nostalgia, I decided to plunge into this game.

 First of all, the good, it looks A M A Z I NG. No, really, the graphics are gorgeous, everything looks super clean and very colorful. It is a simple 2.5 platformer so it's not like the game requires a ton of processing power, but the fact is: It looks beautiful. I don't know if it uses the voice talent from the show, but it's alright. The music is very pleasant... at first. Maybe it has to do with the fact that the game is super boring, but eventually the music started grinding on my ears.

 So the game is a very, VERY basic 2.5 platformer. That'd be fine, except for the fact that it's really boring. Your only enemies are spiny bushes and sometimes bees that chase. Exceptionally slowly, so they are easy to evade. Still, one of my biggest pet peeves with the game is how SLOW it is, to the point that it's super boring. Besides jumping, Franklin has a watering can to water flowers with in order to turn them into platforms or trampolines. Problem is... the game has the world's slowest watering animation, no, really, it should make it into the Guiness World Records.

 To spice things up, pretty much every level has a 'minigame' with Bear, in which you must slowly approach him while he isn't looking and hold still when he turns back. It's lame, it adds padding and slows down the game EVEN more. Another recurring mini-game is a follow-the-leader type in which one of Franklin's friends copies your movements from behind. It's super clunky and adds nothing to the game.

 As long as you collect flies(Is it a reference to the show? you'll unlock a new minigame after every stage, and since the game is 10 stages short you get a total of 10 minigames. They are dumb and very basic... and sometimes, very luck-based. There's one in which you must hide behind the right object, but the right object might turn out to be the one behind you, leaving other players no chance at all to get to it. Oh, yeah, once unlocked, you can play this with another player, in case there's a very special someone that you hate.

 Y'know, maybe, maybe for a kid's game this one's alright. But I need speed in my games. Franklin isn't broken, but man, it was so boring I couldn't wait for it to end.

 3.0