Dog Man: Mission Impawsible | Review (PC)

Dav Pilkey is a name that it genuinely brings me joy to see still going. I read the Captain Underpants and Super Diaper Baby books as a child and fell in love with the wacky antics and Pilkey’s childish yet distinct art style, channeled through the books’ protagonists George Beard and Harold Hutchins. While Captain Underpants is now but a memory in the back of my mind, the legend that is Pilkey lives on with the equally anarchic Dog Man books, which are comprised of in-universe comics from George and Harold after the events of the Captain Underpants books.

So when I heard of a Dog Man game, coming out in the twilight of 2024, naturally I had to review it. Subtitled Mission Impawsible, the game follows the titular Dog Man as well as his friends Lil’ Petey and 80-HD, as they (in the guise of superhero alter egos the Supa [sic] Buddies) must steal back the Key to the City from the devious Piggy and his evil entourage, the F.L.E.A.S. It’s published by Mindscape (a name I haven’t heard in a LONG time) and developed by Floor 84 Games, who seem to only develop licensed games as well as physical toys.

The first thing to note about this game is that the Pilkey art style is in full swing. Everything is designed with the iconic Pilkey look to it, and the game itself looks like it’s been ripped right from the books that inspired it. The Supa Buddies all do one of a few different little poses when jumping, which is another nice touch of the Pilkey look I liked and gave the game a bit of energy that you’d expect from a Dog Man adaptation. It also has out-of-the-box DualSense support, which is also nice.

The goodest boy in town.

Alas, this is all I can say about the game that’s positive. The gameplay, just for instance, is as basic as it comes. It’s a basic platformer with, just for starters, VERY stiff and clumsy movement. Every character feels slower and heavier than they should, and the jumping feels very floaty. There’s also very little conservation of momentum; whichever Supa Buddy you’re playing as also stops dead when turning around with a little stumbling animation. The latter feels more than a little jarring the first time around, and the gameplay as a whole feels pretty uncomfy even when you get used to it. The more played as well, the more I realised just how needlessly long the levels felt. They felt padded, stretched beyond any real enjoyability. Take for example: You can unlock extra abilities by collecting Sprockets – which would be fun if they were, say, hidden and needed to be found. Unfortunately, these are all always in roughly the same area, meaning you barely need to explore at all to find them, rendering the whole exercise naught but filler. The result is that the gameplay comes out so horribly boring that it was a chore to get through the first world, an endeavour that only took me an hour and yet felt far longer than that.

As hinted at before, you can play as any of the three members of the Supa Buddies, namely Dog Man, Lil’ Petey and 80-HD. Dog Man is your “basic” character with average jump height, Lil’ Petey is smaller and can fit into smaller gaps (or in practice, gaps that are only just too small for Dog Man to fit through), and also doesn’t break disintegrating platforms (not that this matters because this game’s disintegrating platforms are VERY lenient), and 80-HD can jump the highest of the three, but instantly breaks disintegrating platforms. It’s clear they’ve gone for a character-swapping sort of dynamic like in, say, LEGO Star Wars, but the implementation feels clunky and artificial. The characters’ movement is also rather disappointing at times; in a game based on a book series all about comic-book style action, it’s a shame to see that everything is animated in such a stiff and basic way. I’d compare it to an old Postgate animation, but even that has more charm.

Not pictured: Grubby pawmarks on the upholstery.

Speaking of charm: While the Pilkey art style is there, the Pilkey sense of humour is practically nowhere to be seen. While Pilkey’s books are chock full of madcap antics and nonsensical situations that you’d think would lend themselves well tom a videogame, Mission Impawsible replaces this with a much more generic story about the key to the city being stolen and a “Living Spray” that acts as more of an excuse to use any old stuff as enemies. The game even reuses old enemies from the previous books (with a little lazy lampshading that they’ve “fought this guy before”) rather than create anything original.

And now we come to the audio… I could say more but to be honest, it’s the same old story as everything else. There’s barely any sound effects for any of the enemies, or indeed the playable characters, and the music sounds straight out of YouTube’s stock music library. I sure hope the guy who did this game’s music isn’t getting too comfy in his job, because it won’t be long before AI can generate the sort of stock tracks that this game’s soundtrack is full of. Heck, some unscrupulous indie games are doing that already.

This evil laboratory was probably a prefab.

So far I’ve said plenty against this game, but in the end it does at least function. What tips this game into “unrecommended” territory for me in particular though is the pricing. While it’s on the low end of modern games, it’s priced at a baffling £34.99, which is FAR too much for what this game offers. Even if your kid likes Dog Man, they’re liable to find Super Mario Bros (which is FREE with a Switch Online subscription) or Giana Sisters 2D more entertaining, or better yet, the latest Dog Man book!

Final Thoughts?

Dog Man: Mission Impawsible is the sort of game that once upon a time you’d get free in cereal boxes, or as a Flash game on the Internet. Back then such games were naught but a brief distraction, and today, this game is a brief distraction with an unreasonably inflated price tag. With boring gameplay, generic audio and only just enough of its source material to qualify as a Dog Man game at all, it’s just not worth it, for yourself or your kids. I found a collection of the first 3 Dog Man books at my local Waterstones for only a few pounds more than this game, which is far better value for money than shelling out the asking price for this low-effort waste of an opportunity.