Platforming at its most basic
The game-play in George of The Jungle consists primarily of swinging from vine to vine, climbing ledges, platform hopping and battling baddies across the four linear locations. Each location offers a new challenge as you come face-to-face with inhabitants from Monkey Village, the Swamp, the Tiki Ruins and Shep Road as they seek to stop your progress to the big boss by attacking you with spears, fists and even their fiery breath.During George's journey into the wild you also encounter various interactive objectives and obstacles, such as bear-traps, which you can avoid by pressing a button at precisely the same time that a 'prompt' flashes up on screen.
On top of that there are also plenty of collectibles to pick up, including coins, which give you extra lives; bananas, which stock up your health metre and golden pineapples, which unlock a number of simple mini-games.
Click for larger imageThe mini-games, which include a memory objective where you need to watch the pattern that Ape plays on his bongos and then copy him, and a collecting game, in which you need to move back and forth on the screen collecting goodies dropped by the Tookie Tookie bird, are standard fare as far as platform games go, but despite being re-hashed versions of other games, they’re a welcome distraction to the predictable vine-swinging antics of George.
Whilst the platforming blueprint has been copied to perfection and the mixture of collecting coins, ledge-hopping, combat and big boss battles may sound appealing to fans of the genre or young George fanatics, it's all been thrown together haphazardly, with shabby implementation of the combat mechanic, a lack of invention in the levels, and some frustrating boss battles.
Despite the Cel-shaded characters looking great, the expertly-illustrated environments, and the humour within the cut-scenes, exploration around the finely drawn 3D locations is limited by the linear journey that you are forced to take through each of the levels.