Future Games Network -- Croc 2 Review (PC)

Sweet as a Twinkie and just as artificial, Croc 2 is too routine even for young gamers. We’ve all dreamed at one time or another of brutally murdering the cloying mascots of kiddie gaming. Who among us hasn’t imagined slipping some piano wire around Mario’s neck or dropping Sonic and Tails into a wood chipper? Croc 2 is not the kind of terrible game that inspires that kind of pathology, but it is a game that is so utterly routine that only the youngest or newest gamers would find it remotely amusing. The game is packed full of the same tropes of jumping, grabbing, swinging and collecting crystals through a "magical world" filled with fuzzy, nonthreatening furballs and sadly incompetent villains. Like a clown who really doesn’t want to be at a kid’s party, Croc 2 just goes through the motions.

There are definitely some good games out there aimed at younger gamers. I loved Rayman 2 on the PC, and the consoles have seen some great titles come out like Ape Escape or Rocket: Robot on Wheels. But for a game to distinguish itself, especially on the PC, it needs to do more than promise hang–gliding, go–karting and gem collecting. Croc 2 has all of those things but little imagination. Croc himself is the standard marketing firm’s idea of a cool character – all spunky ’tude and non–threatening butt stomping. The controls are the ordinary move, jump, attack and ’use item’ buttons, and the game definitely plays better with a gamepad. The one novel introduction to Croc 2 is the addition of something called ’Omniplay’ which allows two players to control a single character. Although I had no use for such a feature, parents may find it a welcome opportunity to play with their children in a video game.

The graphics in Croc 2 will hardly overheat your 3D accelerator. The textures are colorful but bland, the backgrounds are blurry bitmaps, and the character models are a poorly animated glob of polygons. Occasionally there are a few gem–colored explosions, but on the whole, the effects are rather boring. Even on maximum resolution with the blended edges, transparency and translucency effects turned on, Croc 2 never came close to the visually lush qualities of a game like Rayman 2.

The game play is predictably linear, with Croc moving in a straight line through the game’s 40 levels. Besides the obligatory gem collecting, there are also four jigsaw puzzles pieces that open up secret levels, and a merchant known as "Swap Meet Pete" will sell players powerups for their reptilian Lara Croft. One irritating item at Pete’s is the addition of "Gummi Savers Jumps," which allow Croc to jump to higher places. Licensing is part of the inevitable future of all video games, so seeing a product placement like this in the middle of a kid’s game is something we’ll all have to get used to, but we still don’t have to like it.

Like most console–specific games, Croc 2 really doesn’t distinguish itself as a PC title. There are a finite number of save slots, as on a console, and special gongs which operate as save points in the middle of a level, also like a console. As it happens, those save points become important because the touchy controls and poor puzzle design will have players playing some scenarios over and over again. It’s not the worst title to come out for the PC, but its manufactured flimsiness and utter lack of creativity makes me reluctant to recommend this game even for young gamers. If parents want to get their kids something to do on the PC, just have them mess around with a paint program for a little while; it’s cheaper and probably a lot more fun.