Stuart Little 2 Screenshots The Final Say! Gameplay 5.0 Graphics 6.0 Sound 5.5 Value 5.9 Stuart Little 2  - reviewed by Tory Favro Review Date: 06 September 2002 Review Score: 5.9/10  Distributor: GameNation

Based upon the activities that take place in a movie of the same name, Stuart Little 2 unfortunately fails to live up to it's spirited counterpart. There are five games featured within this title for the little ones to play and they are slightly varied in nature taking you to various parts of the movie. These are: Daredevil Driving, Drain Escape, Balloon/Paratroop, Roof Skate and Air Dodge. I must confess that initially I started reviewing the title myself being a father to a small child, however my disappointment was such that I believed the game to be too simplistic for an adult so I grabbed a friend's nephew aged 5 to have a play called Ben. Ben has been in the fortunate position to be our play tester for a number of kids titles and was looking forward to "being" Stuart Little. So then the review began in earnest starting with Daredevil Driving. In this game Stuart has to drive his little car and avoid obstacles and water balloons being dropped by Falcon. Using the arrow keys, Ben attempted to control the car and avoid all the obstacles. Exactly what happened to me, occurred yet again. When clearly avoiding dropped water balloons, the car would still get "hit" by the splash although it was happening away from the vehicle. The collision area is quite poorly positioned and causes accidents when none should have occurred. This caused confusion as all Ben could see was that he was crashing when nothing was there. Another thing that failed to impress was the large amount of pop up that was evident in the graphics. From there we moved onto Drain Escape. Stuart needs to make his way through the drain system, collect berries and eventually find a pearl necklace. Ben and I got stuck again as Stuart seems to have difficulty jumping and grabbing ladders which allowed the nasties in the drain system to have a chomp at Stuart. When pressing the spacebar there is a delay of about a half second which confuses and causes you to fail miserably. Even with me, an experienced gamer of many years, I still had trouble factoring in the delay during gameplay. Balloon/Paratroop was fairly cool however once again was flawed. Stuart needs to grab a balloon that will float him to the rooftop, avoid the hazards and change balloons when they go flat. Once again collision detection errors meant that Stuart would miss balloons consistently even though he had passed right through them. This game would have been a blast had this simple element been tested. Roof skate was the one game that was a lot of fun and had both Ben and I happily making Stuart skate over the rooftops. Stuart is really well animated and the little phrases that he used, whilst repetitive, were amusing and well placed.

Once again, although to a lesser extent, collision problems had us retrying multiple times to get over a ledge when you could see he had clearly made it. Collecting plane parts for Stuart added to the interest in this level.

The final game was the Air Dodge and it was at this point that I was glad that the review was almost over. Stuart needs to fly his little plane, collect goodies and avoid items that could be crashed into. Movement involved up, down, left and right with the items coming toward you. After missing almost every item, we finally realised that they were passing below us but were so poorly realised that it appeared that everything was happening on the one level.

Stuart Little himself was very well animated in every game and looked as alive as his big screen counterpart. The two best looking games were Roof Skating and Drain Escape. The two best games to play were Roof Skating and Balloon/Paratroop. I would recommend hiring this game before making a purchase.

- Tory Favro