by Lanae Celeste

Created on: June 03, 2008   Last Updated: June 08, 2008

The first thing I did upon completion of the 60 minute trial for Juniper Games' Mr. Smoozles Goes Nutso was uninstall it as quickly as possible to prevent it from spreading its horrible, life-sucking venom to other games on my PC.

The only thing game creator Steve Ince can be commended for is the creative premise: a race of space aliens called the Goragons invades Earth with a reality-warping wave, a situation ripe with potential for humor and creative game play. Unfortunately, as the main character, a cat named Ed, runs around trying to free his fellow anthropomorphic buddies, none of the potential of this game's premise is realized.

As Ed, the player must run back and forth between different maze-like screens completing tasks and gathering objects in order to free his imprisoned friends whom he can talk to at any time. The linear tasks are not concentrated in progressive areas, so Ed's back and forth errand running becomes extremely tedious after a very short time. After going through the same handful of rooms dozens of times, with no enemies or puzzles to break up the monotony, the player is in danger of falling asleep.

The only "action" Ed encounters is being chased and shot at by title character Mr. Smoozles. However, Ed can only run away from Mr. Smoozles, having no capability of fighting back, and loses a life after being hit 5 times. At first the player may be tempted to run around in the maze to avoid this fate, but after a while it is just as logical to run right through Mr. Smoozles.

Random characters that Ed can talk to are scattered throughout the various maze rooms. The creator obviously attempted humor in these frequent dialogues to no avail. The conversations are way too lengthy, and often quite pointless. Unfortunately, the player has to talk to every one of these characters over and over to try to figure out how to get the next necessary item so that yet another maze room can be unlocked and the whole process can be repeated.

When this stale, repetitive game play is combined with dull 2D graphics and agitating music that sounds like it was lifted from early 90s arcade games, it would be miraculous if the gamer doesn't take a hammer to the PC screen after half an hour.

Save yourself an hour of agony and pass on this one. I give Mr. Smoozles Goes Nutso an overall score of 1/5.

Learn more about this author, Lanae Celeste.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.