Review #441: Ed, Edd n Eddy - The Mis-Edventures

 Fell short of Edspectations.

 Ed, Edd n Eddy was one of Cartoon Network's final great cartoons before falling into its dark age. It had an original wavy hand-drawn look that made it stand out from the rest. Lo and behold, Midway went ahead and published a game based on the franchise.

 True to the series itself, what the Eds want are jawbreakers, and thus they set out on six different chapters(Called scams in the game) to get them. Each Scam features two animated scenes, one before you start it and another one after finishing it. These are true to the series' artstyle, but are crudely animated in what looks to be Flash, which is a bit disappointing. I'm pretty sure every voice actor from the series is in the game, but I can't confirm since I've only watched the Latin American dub. That said, every primary and secondary character from the show made it into the game, which is rather neat, and the graphics do a good job of bringing these characters into the 3-D realm. There're six short levels, as well as 2 unlockable bonus stages, but you'll be done with the game in a few hours.

 The game plays like an adventure-puzzle hybrid, you control one Ed at a time, but the other will follow close behind, and can swap Eds at will. Each Ed has unique abilities and a formation: Ed can lift and throw stuff and his formation makes all Eds frantically run forwards in order to break obstacles, Edd can shoot from afar with his slingshot and activate switches, his formation makes the other Eds give him a boost in order to jump higher. As for Eddy, he can shoot stink bombs(Pretty much useless) and has the Tower of Ed formation, in which all Eds climb atop each other, allowing you to grab stuff above you or cross through thin bridges.

 Puzzles are pretty easy to figure out, assuming the game doesn't tell you exactly what to do. Movement is pretty loose, but it works for the game. Each level has plenty of stuff to find: Easter Eggs(That allows for three mods(Big heads, Small heads or Astronaut costumes) and three unlockable short shorts.), Jawbreakers(Collect them all to earn cheats!) and costume pieces(Which doesn't actually grant you costumes but rather the two extra levels). Still, the game feels rather bland, there's the occasional stand-out segment, like a race against one of the kids, but the rest of the time you'll be repeating the same exact puzzles, albeit slightly reskinned. The thin-bridge being the worse, since the Tower of Ed collision detection is terrible.

 While I applauded the graphical presentation, the music is hideous to the ears, it gets really old, really fast. And a rather minor gripe, there's an overworld, the Cul-de-sac, but you can't tell which entrance leads to which level, so hopefully you can remember where you've been.

 Ed, Edd n Eddy - The Mis-Edventure is strictly for fans only. It's not horrible, but it's rather bland and somewhat uninspired. I can tell that there were good ideas implemented into the game, but they didn't make the most of them, instead resorting to the same puzzles over and over again. A few more polishing could've been appreciated, things like Edd's trampoline jump not always working quite right. Still, for what it is, it's passable.
 5.0 out of 10