Rugrats in Paris: The Movie

Yes, not content with roaming around Paris on the N64, those utterly deranged, balloon-headed pre-adolescents the Rugrats are carrying on their chaotic European escapades on the Game Boy Color as well!

The plot of the GBC version of Rugrats in Paris is fairly similar to that of the N64 version, albeit a bit more twee. Once again, the kids have gone to visit EuroReptarLand and the object of the game is to make your way around the park, playing various mini-games to gain tickets which allow you access to various platform sections, which in turn open up new areas of the park. Your task initially is to track down a Princess that the 'rats have spotted and whom they think would make a good mum for Chuckie... told you the plot was twee!

Mat Mice

Unlike the gameplay of the N64 version, in Rugrats in Paris on the Game Boy Color you don’t have to trudge endlessly round a fairly deserted park in order to try out the various mini-games. Instead, progress through the park is made via a cursor on the park map, by which you simply select your destination and travel there instantaneously. At first you can only access three destinations, all of which are mini-games. Play these games to win tickets, and you can then tackle one of the platform sections. The first two you have access to are a standard "find the switches" multi-level sideways-scrolling affair, and a slightly more original multi-directional scrolling flying game where the youngest Rugrat (who’s name escapes me at the moment) must pilot a plane around a large cloud-filled area, locating various famous landmarks and taking photographs of them.

Carpet Gerbils

Rugrats In Paris – like its N64 counterpart – has some positive aspects and some slightly negative ones too. Graphically it looks very nice – all the Rugrats are instantly recognisable – and the sound is fairly reasonable for a Game Boy Color title. The mini-games themselves are very simple to play, but surprisingly addictive, although it’s debatable quite how many times you will want to play them, because unlike the N64 version there’s no multiplayer option (could have been done with a link-up!) and the patterns in the games seem to be fixed rather than random.

The platform sections are less fun, being fairly large with very little going on – the first for instance tends to consist of jumping repeatedly over little robots to find switches, and it seems to go on for ages! However, original touches like the aerial photography level give the game a bit of a lift and the difficulty level ensures that you won’t finish this game off the same day you get it. All in all, a fairly decent game and one that’s well worth a look, particularly if you’re a fan of the TV series and the Rugrats movies

Let’s cut to the chase shall we: what is a Rugrat? The Oxford English Dictionary describes one as: "A small human, commonly found in a cage full of soft toys, screaming and with a foul odour that brings tears to your eyes". What it certainly does not say is, "A small human, commonly found in a variety of amusing situations, talks quite fluently and has an insatiable appetite for adventure". Still, if your only experience with a Rugrat involves a very popular children’s television programme, then you may be convinced that the last definition of the term is all too true. It’s not though! Despite what you have been led to believe, small children do not just jet off with their parents to Paris to visit an amusement park, and then find themselves on a quest to save the city from a giant snail and rescue a princess at the same time. Or if they do, then their parents have a lot to answer for. However, this very premise just happens to form the plot for the latest Rugrats movie which, coincidentally, is also the plot for the N64 videogame of the same name.

Bye Bye Baby

The aim of Rugrats in Paris is to roam around the rather empty EuroReptarLand collecting red tickets to buy useful objects, and winning gold tickets to buy the exclusive Reptar Helmet. The significance of this helmet relates back to the plot. A giant robot called RoboSnail is busy trashing Paris (let it, we say!) and only the full-size Reptar Robot can possibly defeat it. With the helmet, you control Reptar and can therefore go into battle against RoboSnail and hopefully save the day! EuroReptarLand is separated into five areas and each one contains tickets to collect and games to play. The red tickets allow you to buy objects that grant you access to previously locked games and also toys to trade with the other Rugrats in order to collect more golden tickets.

You can play as any of the major characters from the television series (so that means Tommy, Chuckie, Angelica, Phil, Lil, Sleepy, Dopey and Doc... no, hang on, those last few were dwarves from Snow White) and one new character, exclusive to the movie, by the name of Kimi. Admittedly, all of the characters have the same abilities, but, in the end, all that matters is the fact that you can play as your favourite Rugrat, each of whom has their own unique personality that comes across in what they say. As you can imagine (if you know anything about the TV show), Angelica makes all the mean and greedy comments whilst Phil is just rude and hyperactive. One down-side to all of this sampled speech is that the characters are restricted to just a few phrases each. This means that after a while, hearing Phil say "Give me that" for the fiftieth time starts to get rather annoying.

Nappy Dresser

The game is separated into three different sections. The ticket-hunting sections, the mini-games and finally the Reptar battle at the end. The first section involves your chosen Rugrat roaming around the various areas of the theme park collecting as many red tickets as you can get your hands on. As mentioned before, these tickets are your currency inside the park and help you to buy many important objects. For instance, inside a warehouse you find Chuckie holding a golden ticket that he will only relinquish if you buy him a Reptar ball. So with the correct amount of tickets, this ball can be purchased from the shop and then exchanged for the gold ticket. Basically, think of these tickets like Disney Dollars inside EuroDisney: fun and unique inside the park, but useless everywhere else in the world!

There are also places in EuroReptarLand where you must obtain an object to open up a mini-game. A piece of a jigsaw, bought from the shop, allows you to play a jigsaw game which, if successfully completed, wins you another ticket. One of the reasons that this game is so accessible is because of the many different ways you can collect golden tickets. This means you don’t have to play every single mini-game in the park in order to get to the end of the main game. If one mini-game in particular is too hard, then there is a stands out in particular is the one where you must throw balls at an assortment of targets. The actual task itself is not too difficult to complete but as the stages get harder, the margin of error becomes so small that the games become very trying! Failure to complete a task means that you have to start the whole thing again, and because each game is quite long, having to wade through it over and over until you get it right can become a bit of a chore, and this process wears away some of the fun. The same can be said of the final battle between you – as Reptar – and RoboSnail which is a major strain on your patience. The main problem with this section is the sloppy control system, Reptar is slow, understandably, and not particularly responsive. When attacking with fireballs, Reptar becomes stuck for a few seconds and this gives your opponent more than enough time to get a couple of shots in. More often than not RoboSnail is simply too nippy and can out-run and out-shoot you, making the final battle very hard indeed. Reptar’s slow response time, as you’d imagine, doesn’t help things at all. However, while this might be a little on the annoying side, it is far from a major problem. In fact many of the games are a lot of fun, including bumper car challenges, games where things pop up and you whack them (oh grow up!), ball-tossing competitions (I said behave), balloon-popping, mini golf and fly-swatting! Although it sounds like a bunch of thrown-together ideas, as a whole it all seems to work. The mini-golf course in particular is an enjoyable diversion and a great game in its own right.

Dummy Run

Possibly the biggest fault of RiP (isn’t it a bit ominous that Rugrats In Paris can be abbreviated to that?) is the sections between mini-games that involve you walking around, collecting those damned tickets. All of the Rugrats walk pretty slowly and handle equally sluggishly and so having to wade around each area at quite a leisurely pace slows the game down a hell of a lot, and makes the actual hunting part of it a big pain in the nappy. Oddly, when the game requires a fast response, controlling your Rugrat is no problem at all. It responds as quickly as you need it to and doesn’t let you down, it’s just in those sections where the pace of the game itself slows down that you notice how boring everything becomes. It almost seems as though RiP is a game of two speeds!

During these parts of the game there is nothing else to do. There are no obstacles to avoid, enemies to battle or puzzles to solve – nothing, in fact, to make this part of RiP a little more interesting. As it stands, EuroReptarLand is a very empty and dull place to go. I mean, there aren’t even any other visitors to the park, just a little baby with no adult supervisor, running amuck. Now that’s just mad! What we are left with is a reasonably entertaining selection of party games built around a rather uninspiring plot. Which is a bit of a shame really.

Midwife Crisis

Happily, on the visual side of things, everything is a little bit merrier! Compared to the previous Rugrats title (that’s the Scavenger/Treasure Hunt one for those of you who are interested) the graphics have been improved dramatically. This time around the characters actually resemble their celluloid counterparts and not the Sesame Street rejects they appeared to mimic in the last game. Although rather sparse, the environments themselves are also just as good looking. Despite being as empty as a biscuit tin at a pot-smokers' convention, the areas in RiP are certainly created well enough to make you believe that you are in an amusement park because each section captures that candy-covered schmaltz every theme park in the world is drenched in. In some places, there are nice little visual touches that improve what would be an otherwise dull screen. During the game that involves your pet frog eating any insect it can get its tongue around, for instance, the face of your chosen baby can be seen reflected in the pond water below. If you take the time to notice, then it’s possible to spot the expressions on the face change along with the action. It all looks very pretty and manages to recreate the Rugrats universe very successfully.

The sound, on the other hand, is not quite as impressive. Basically, you can take it or leave it. The music doesn’t add much to the game and even if you decide to tolerate it, chances are the overly-cute 'tinkle tinkle' music will drive you insane! Although if the music is a little bit of a let down, then at least the sound effects manage to do their job properly. During the Ninja Whacking game (don’t ask, it all makes sense in the game, and it’s not rude at all) every whack on the head is accompanied by the kind of clang that you’d expect to hear as Richie’s frying pan makes contact with Eddie’s head in Bottom.

Romper Suit Stomper

Thankfully for devotees of the Saturday morning TV show, Rugrats In Paris – the time spent walking aimlessly around the theme park aside – has a great, varied selection of mini-games to play and challenges to confront. There are, admittedly, the odd one or two that fall a bit flat but the majority of the games are loads of fun. As mentioned before, this is a vast improvement over the last game, but yet still manages to remain nothing more than a reasonably average title. There is some great fun to be had from the adventure as a whole, but due to the fact that these games are all rather loosely linked together, the general feel of the game seems rather incomplete – it’s best described as fun yet forgettable. This game is highly recommended to fans of the television series, the film and anyone who likes console-based party games featuring chatty ankle-biters

In concert with the release of their feature film this fall, the Rugrats will be returning for a second adventure on the N64 compliments of THQ. Voices from the original cartoon cast pervade 16 levels of 3D gameplay and a handful of bonus scenarios. This time Avalanche has included multiplayer support for the minigames and room for two in the full game, so plenty of Rugrats (er, fans) can get in on the action.