Ice Age 2 for DS

The Ice Age 2 for DS game was nothing like the Play-Station 2 version. The console version was fun. The DS version was not. There are three games on the cartridge. A main game and two mini games. The main game suffers from the characters being far to tiny to see well. The items and the ice cubes that they are hidden in are microscopic sized as well. This is just a very poor design. The levels are monotonous repetitve and unoriginal.

Graphics

The graphics are homogenous and average. It is hard to see anything because of the over saturation of white and blue. It lacks texture and sharpness. The characters aren’t as enjoyable as they should be because they are too hard to see. The game should not have been map centered. It should have been character centered. It is low quality compared to everything else seen on the DS. With all the terrific artwork from the game they could have done a much better job. The PS 2 version looked fantastic compared to this. Usually games on the DS are just as fun for different reasons. They are cute and quirky. Even with all the subject matter to draw from this game fell short.

Gameplay

You have to go along the map and you can play as either, Sid, Manny or Diego. Each character has different abilities. You have to only change them by scrolling over a special icon for each one. If you get to a bridge for instance, and you are Manny then you have to go back and find an icon for Sid so you can climb. Sid can get around and climb. Manny can smash things, and Diego jumps. The point seems to be to rescue animals that are trapped in ice. You have to find an item in each level in order to get to the next one. There is far too much backtracking.

The primary game is timed as well. This means that you are forced to play the levels over and over again. They aren’t much fun the first time around. The acorns light the way down the path. If you pick them up then you have no trail to find your way back. The game is glitchy. The camera is terrible and it doesn’t help with the poor level design over all. It makes it very hard to see where you are going.

The two mini-games don’t improve things much. One is called Split Personality and the gameplay for that one is just incomprehensible. The only saving grace in this game is the Scrat acorn game. In that you collect acorns by sliding them over to scrat who buries them. The reward is seeing how high a score you can get within a certain amount of time. That’s not too bad and it could have been very addicting. They should have used that scenario for the primary game for the DS. Scart could have had several different levels involving various obstacles and items like the bomb that Scrat has to do away with in order to keep collecting acorns.

Conclusions

Even thought the Scrat mini game was ok, it was much to short to effect the score. The game seems like it was designed for little kids, and they didn’t pay much attention to making a good game. Unfortunately this game suffers from the movie game curse that we see much too often.
Score: 3 out of 10

Replayablity : Poor.
Girls Point of View - Graphics : Very Poor
Will Girls Want to Play it? : Not so much.
Purse : $29.99 Too short and too frustrating. Rent it if you must.

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