 Review By: Siou Choy |
Developer: | Artificial Mind and Movement |
| Publisher: | THQ | |
| Genre: | Action | |
| ESRB: | Everyone | |
| # Of Players: | 1 | |
| Online Play: | N/A | |
| Accessories: | N/A | |
| Buy Now: |   |
Drake & Josh, Drake & Josh……hmm, where to start. Let’s try bland factoids.
- Drake & Josh is the latest Nickelodeon TV show to somehow rate a Game Boy Advance tie-in.
- The show appears to center itself dramatically on a pair of unlikely teenage step-brothers. Three guesses what their names are. No, not Beavis & Butthead – 10 points off for that answer!
The "unlikely" part derives from the fact that these two fairly odd looking fellows are supposed to be opposites: the "cool", presumably "dangerous" one (a laid back "musician" type), and the "safe" and "studious" one. Yeah, that’s right, the plot for every friggin’ YA novel and shojo manga ever written. Let’s move on, shall we?
OK, plausibility issue #1:
Somehow Drake is able to use his supposed guitar skills (and yeah, he really looks like a 10 hour a day heavy metal fretboard virtuoso…Yngwie Dorkstein, anybody?) to impress and woo the girls into doing things for him.
Like girls care about that sort of thing in the first place. When’s the last time you saw a gaggle of females assaulting the likes of Carlos Santana, George Lynch, or Frank Zappa? OK, Frank’s a ringer…unless those girls were hardcore goth chicks into hanging around graveyards in the Reseda area, but that’s another story…
Anyway, ignoring the implausibility of the very premise, we run into plausibility issue #2:
These virtual girls supposed adoration extends itself to the level of unlocking doors and running interference with hall monitors (do they still have those? How 1950’s…) so he can sneak by to get to class (if he was such a rock n’ roll animal and bad boy, why is he so worried about getting to class in the first place? Just ditch, already…)
Sound in the game is really dull, unless you have a thing for the cheesy but catchy little midi file that plays when Donald…I mean Howard…I mean Drake (quack quack) plays his guitar. Given the blandness of its surroundings, I started to actually enjoy the tinny, sing-songy little ditty after a while…
As you might expect, there’s not a hell of a lot to the game. It basically consists of level after level of Drake (and his trans-fat infused "cakes"…oh, damn, wrong again) sneaking around the school avoiding hall monitors, popcorn, wet floors, cameras, robot dogs, and other inventions created by your younger sister Megan.
Uh…excuse me…plausibility issue #3, anyone? Even assuming the kid’s a mad genius…what, does she have stocks in the school, or something? Or just a budding fascist? A career in law enforcement beckons for thee, O Megan…
And barring that postulative prognostication for this character’s virtual future, do you mind explaining to me just who in hell is afraid of their little sister? It makes you wonder how these two losers get through school (not to mention life in general) without being beaten up every day. Then again, it’s a "kinder, gentler" nation, these days…giving these dorks a beatdown would probably be viewed as some kind of "hate crime", if not a "terrorist act", in the present politicosocial climate…
Posted: 2007-05-27 07:06:08 PST