Gaming Target - Xbox: Zapper: One Wicked Cricket

Written by Leigh Culpin on December 19, 2002

Full Review: УNo, it's not a clicker, it's a zapper!!Ф

My generation grew up with Mario and Sonic the Hedgehog. Personally I was a Sega fan, owning every Genesis Sonic game that came out. My biggest gaming regret was selling my Genesis and all dozen games for an N64. And with the somewhat recent release of the next-gen consoles, I've always thought that the Уkid gamesФ were mainly on GameCube Ц nothing against that, but Xbox isn't exactly your pre-teen adventure game system. I was almost feeling sorry for those young kidsЕ back in my day it was ALL about gameplay since awesome graphics were anything that played 2D but looked 3D. Nowadays there seem to be more and more games that have great graphics but no substance. Well, upon seeing Zapper, I had hoped perhaps that had changed. Maybe there was hope for the young me that missed my side-scrolling days. Boy was I wrong.

Zapper starts off like a kid's game. It has a cartoonish menu, and just really feels like a game you'd find your younger sibling playing. This is good I think. I start playing. It has a semi-comical cutscene, obviously aimed at younger children. Cool. The game starts. Okay, these controls take some getting used toЕ that's all right, Halo's did at first too. Unfortunately, unlike Halo, this game isn't really worth the learning curve. The gameplay is amazingly repetitive to say the least. That isn't necessarily a bad thing: thinking back, the Sonic games were too. But they had cool loops, you could run fast, and the bosses were awesome. AndЕ well, truth be told, none of that is there in Zapper. It's slow. It's repetitive. It has boring environments. The gameplay basically consists of: jumping ahead one square at a time while collecting little eggs and fireflies which act as УcoinsФ or УringsФ in each level. Collect the 6 eggs in the level, and on to the next. The designers tried to spice up gameplay with УsecretsФ and boxes that can only be destroyed with power-ups, but quite frankly, the gameplay is nothing but more repetitive because of this, since you often have to backtrack after acquiring the single use power-ups to use them. The game isn't really even 3D Ц you have an overhead view of Zapper (the cricket whom you control) and can move vertically or horizontally on a grid-like map. The highlight of this game aspect was moving diagonally across the screen while flying Ц a jump that basically lasts two squares rather than one. And while you can't really see the grid you're on per say, you certainly feel it.

Now the trick for this game is really looking at it from a kid's perspective. The kid in me doesn't like it, so we've ruled this game out for adults. But what about the actual real-life children? Well, it might be more bearable Ц for a time. The repetitiveness of the game isn't really going to keep your children coming back for more, and to be honest, if your kid owns an Xbox anyways, he or she likely didn't buy it (or receive it) for games such as this.

Truth be told, this game isn't really horrible or anything, it's just not very good Ц it's generally the definition of mediocrity. You start with 20 lives Ц yes, 20 Ц and one hit will УkillФ you, be it touching a bee or falling in the water. Unless, of course, you get a УShieldФ, which is actually a bicycle helmet that Zapper wears, one that will protect from a bee sting, if not drowning. While there are some other Уpower-upФ like items in the game, none are terribly exciting and don't really add much depth to the gameplay. Neither does the gameplay for that matter Ц with a soccer-like mode, I had hoped it might be one of the saving graces of the game. Not to be. And really only because of the grid-based gameplay Ц had it been a free roaming game, the soccer could have been actually a fair amount of fun, but alas, no such luck.

Zapper is really trying to be a puzzle game, but without the puzzles. The reminiscence of the Frogger games (which I never really liked) is certainly in place, and really I can't recommend this game to anyone but diehard Frogger fans who want similar gameplay on a new system. The biggest difference between these two game names is that one is trying to be the other, and frankly, I'd rather take the original and pay significantly less.

As I said before, many games are trying to make up bad gameplay with sweet graphics. Unfortunately, we aren't that lucky in this case Ц the game looks as mediocre as it plays, and sounds about the same too. This game could have almost certainly been on the N64, and practically the SNES or Genesis without too much great loss. Maybe then the game would have felt less polygonal and more artistic.