Adv: Pow Pow's Great Adventure [by Outside the Box Software]

Game Review:  Pow Pow's Great Adventure
Release: November 19, 2004
Genre: Adventure
Developer: Outside the Box Software
System Requirements: 2 GHZ Intel or AMD Processor, Windows 98/ME/2000/XP, DirectX 7, 256MB Ram  (also available for Mac)
Players: 1
Price: $24.95
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Pow Pow's Great Adventure is a 2D/3D platformer. I have yet to see 3D elements incorporated successfully into a platformer, and Pow Pow didn't manage it either. But let's start from the beginning. The game looked nice on the outside. It came in a professional-looking DVD box (with a free gamepad while supplies last). The box had a nice anime cover graphic. The install menu was also stylish and had some interesting extras (Behind the Scenes, Developer Bios). The developer has a great name, and their splash screen was voice-acted by a woman with a lovely British accent. But it was all downhill from there.

Pow Pow begins with an illustrated story with voice-acting and anime graphics, which impressed me because I know how much work must have gone into making it. It's a pity that it just wasn't very good. The voice actors were so-so, a bit fake-sounding. The illustration had that shaky-line look that plagues much amateur anime art, and the female character Mai Mei's proportions were awkward. The dialogue was okay, but the characterization was lame and the story had no subtlety and didn't explain why the initial incident happened or why the characters thought their strategy would fix it.

And then there's the gameplay itself. The game is difficult to control, and it is difficult to understand where your 2D character is in relation to the 3D elements of the game, especially the level's map and the boss monsters. The PDA is conceptually interesting, but annoying in implementation. And there were a lot of bugs.

Graphics: 6
Neither the anime graphics nor the 3D graphics in this game are bad, but they are both rather boring in design and color scheme, and don't mesh that well with each other. I do like the main character's poses and facial expressions, and the star-like pieces of the artifact.

Sound: 8
The sound is the most solid element of this game – the music and sound effects are good, and I think it deserves bonus points for having voice-acting at all. It is better than some professional anime dubs I've heard.

Game Play: 5
It is nice that this game has gamepad support, but with or without a gamepad it is still very difficult to control the jumping and magic-firing. 3D sidescrollers always have problems with letting the player see where they're going, and this one does not include the ability to rotate the camera, zoom out, or look at a level-map.

The worst elements of the gameplay are the boss monsters and weather conditions that attack along the z-axis (straight out of the screen toward the player). It is next to impossible to tell how close these are to hitting your character so you can shoot or avoid them, and it really doesn't help that they kill you with one hit. I was unable to finish this game because I couldn't figure out how to land a single hit on the level 5 boss, much less the several hits needed to defeat it.

The bugs in this game also detract a lot from the gameplay. Elevator blocks occasionally lose solidity such that you fall through them and die. Monsters that collide with you while they are jumping 'forget' to return to the ground and walk around in mid-air. Monster sounds sometimes continue after you have already killed the monster which makes things a bit confusing. And the PDA interface does not work properly – if you try to send more than one item or more than one of an amount of money you get an error saying you have already done that, and it got me killed more than once by ringing while I was in the middle of a jump.

Value: 4
In no way is this game fun enough to justify paying for it. It might be worth downloading and playing if it were free.

Concept: 6
The place this game went wrong was at the concept phase. The story is almost non-existent, which wouldn't have been a problem except there's a huge amount of voice acting and illustration to convey that non-existent story. Mixing 2D and 3D art is rarely anything other than awkward –the regular monsters, characters, and platforms look good together, but it was disconcerting to go from 2D regular monster to 3D bosses. Most tellingly, the concept '3D platformer' is a recipe for dysfunctional gameplay, as are hazards that attack from a direction the character can't move in. The PDA was an interesting concept, it was just poorly implemented.

Fun: 6
While there are a few cute or fun moments (Mai Mei: “Why are you wearing a sweatshirt in the desert? Why don't you take it off?” Pow Pow: “I don't know. I just can't.”), the game was unpleasant to play because it was too hard to control and too buggy.

Overall: 6
This game is interesting and very unique but didn't pull off what it was trying to do as well as it could have.
Added: February 8th 2005
Reviewer: Mare Kuntz
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