While George of the Jungle is nothing new in the grand scale of things, he’s now making his Debut on the Wii. All I can say is oh my, what a debut.

With several years of storied history you would think the developers would have a field day plucking one of the fabled tales of George and his animal friends. This is unfortunately not the case with the game being placed around the common cold. Two of George’s friends (Doctor Scott and Witch Doctor) are working on a cure for the common cold (yes in the middle of the jungle, one of the hottest and humid places in the world). After the both find out that their friends Ursula and Magnolia are sick they come to the girl’s aid only to start fighting with each other. During the argument a monkey makes off with a book containing the potential cure and George has to find the book and its pages that have now been scattered across the jungle to cure his two friends. Sounds like quite a high tension story seeing as it’s about a cold, don’t they have Lemsip in the jungle?

Graphically, the game is surprising impressive. I’m not talking Super Mario Galaxy or Super Smash Bros Brawl standard here, but the game looks good with a 2D style with 3D character models and stages. It has a New Super Mario Bros look to it and for what many would call ‘Shovelware’ the games graphics are definitely its high-point. I Wish I could give the same praise to FMV’s which are highly compressed to the point where it looks bad. What’s worse is the loading screen in the MIDDLE of the opening cinematic which is just a no-no.

Audio and music is standard fair here. As you would expect from a kids game, the voice acting is annoying enough to make me want to knock myself out with a brick. That’s not to say it’s bad, I’ve never seen the TV show so I can’t tell if the voices are done well or badly but either way they are annoying. I’m sure kids would find them funny, grown ups however will compare it to cheesy martial art movie dubs in the 70s and 80s.

As a 20-something gamer I’ve played games like Ikaruga, legendary difficulty on Halo, Viewtiful Joe and Ninja Gaiden. As a teenage gamer I played games like Metroid, Flashback, Contra and Super Mario World. At no time no matter the era of gaming have I ever had to spend 2 hours fighting the 1st boss on a children’s game. As a game rated ‘E’ and ‘3+’ depending where you are from the difficulty level is way too hard for children and I doubt the developers ever tested it on children. Maybe children could play it if they knew the controls.

Unless your one of the 1% of people who read manuals every time they buy a game, its more than likely you will turn this game on and spend a few minutes figuring out what does what. The main issue is that the controls are weird you probably wont know all the controls for a while. No explanation is given for basic controls such as jumping, running, attacking, crawling and rolling. Yes these are basic control functions but this is a children’s game, shouldn’t it have a basic tutorial?

Closing Comments
Wow, just wow. George of the Jungle isn’t a good game. Its not glitchy, it’s not buggy, it doesn’t look terrible and runs smoothly on the Wii. The problem is its unfair difficulty, imprecise motion controls, terrible cut scenes with loading screens stuck in the middle and awful voice acting. I wouldn’t recommend this game to gamers young or old as its flaws and blemishes far outweigh its good qualities and fair visuals.

Score 4.0

+ Nicely styled graphics.
+ Smooth frame rate throughout.
+ Challenging gameplay..

- ..But too challenging for children.
- Cut scences and voice acting are bad.
- Motion controls aren’t precise.