July 17, 2007 - Nintendo may have given up on Game Boy, but third party developers haven't been so quick to let him go – there's still some life left in the little guy, and plenty of companies are still supporting the platform with new releases. New licensed releases anyway. It seems like every fresh title hitting the shelves in Game Boy's final days is a cartoon brand or film tie-in – and that's the case here, with Ratatouille. Developed by Helixe and published by THQ, Ratatouille makes playable the tale of Disney and PIXAR's latest animated feature, the story of a Parisian rodent named Remy who dreams of becoming a chef. And while this adventure may not be exciting enough to draw back players who've already moved on to other hardware, it is a solid and entertaining experience for younger gamers, or those still proudly playing a GBA as their primary portable.
Remy's tale unfolds in France, and takes the form of a side-scrolling, platforming fetch quest – this rat's after ingredients. Fresh carrots and tomatoes. Juicy lemons. Exotic spices. Remy needs them all, if his latest kitchen creations are to be excellent enough to please the palettes of pretentious Parisians. He'll run, jump, climb and crawl his way through a variety of environments to find the fragrant foodstuffs, following his nose to locate the most well hidden items.
Control and animation are spot-on for Remy. His abilities are many, and his poses flow fluidly from one to the next – he can run on all fours, double jump through the air, land on a thin ledge and hang from its edge precariously, and every action feels natural. This rat can even wall jump, Ninja Gaiden style, and that's just plain stylish to see.
Each of his many maneuvers is necessary, too, to navigate the multi-tiered, labyrinthine levels. Stage design is the enemy in Ratatouille – stage design, and the clock. There aren't really any bad guys to encounter and defeat. Rather, it's a race against time to explore each area and find the right path of platforms, ropes and jumps to take to find each hidden ingredient.
The side-scrolling sequences and countdown clock take a break every once in a while, when Remy enters an interior area like a sewer pipe or mouse hole. Inside, the perspective becomes top-down, and the action focus switches to puzzle play. Remy can push and pull objects, trigger switches, wield limited weapons (like a little plastic sword) and activate his keen sense of smell all in this mode – the latter helps you home in on hidden foods by making trackable odors visible to the eye for a few moments. These dungeon-like portions of play are a welcome addition to the overall design – swapping back and forth between viewpoints extends the interest in both halves of the experience.
After all the fetching's done and the groceries have been gathered, Ratatouille wraps things up with a simple but effective cooking mini-game. In it, you move three pots full of boiling dishes around on a three-burner stove, adding ingredients and monitoring each pot's temperature so that none of the food gets too charred. For a bit more added depth, too, there's an unlockable image gallery that you can populate with PIXAR pictures as you find stars scattered throughout the side-scrolling stages.
Closing Comments
Ratatouille on the Game Boy Advance is a fine final course on Nintendo's last-gen handheld. The Game Boy brand will likely still keep itself just slightly alive throughout the rest of the year on a diet of more licensed movie tie-in games like this one, while few people even remain to be paying attention – but those gamers still powering on their SPs and Micros would do well to take a look at this impressively animated, solidly fun quest to find the finest food in France.
| Rating | Description |  |
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| out of 10 | click here for ratings guide |
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| 6.0 | Presentation Still-frame captures from the film move the story along between levels. Disappointing is the game's lack of battery save – you have to keep track of passwords instead. |
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| 8.0 | Graphics Impressive animation for Remy, whose movements flow easily from jumping, to running, to anything else. The environments are detailed as well. |
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| 7.5 | Sound Good sound work captures the theme and feel of running through the streets, sewers and soup kitchens of the City of Light. |
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| 7.0 | Gameplay Younger players will be the ones to most enjoy the simple platforming found here, but there's added depth with the game's top-down "dungeon" areas and cooking mini-game. |
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| 7.0 | Lasting Appeal A bit of skill and diligence will let dedicated players find the hidden star icons in each stage, and thus unlock more and more of the included bonus image gallery. |
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| 7.0 |
OVERALL (out of 10 / not an average) |
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