| Introduction
Tom & Jerry, the famous dueling cat and mouse
duo are back on the GBA in their latest adventure, Infurnal
Escape. This time around:
"Tom is in deep trouble again! After getting
flattened by a grand piano, he finds himself in the
"Underworld", boiling in a cauldron of Mephi-Spikele's
cat stew. In order to restore Tom's good karma and return
him to a normal life, he must successfully perform missions
that have been outlined by a heavenly emissary. If he
fails... the pitchfork awaits!!".
GamePlay
Infurnal Escape is a platform game intended for younger
players, as such, the game objectives are rather simple
and consists mainly of running, jumping, climbing and
item collecting. When armed with a baseball bat, however,
Tom can also hit his enemies. Initially, the collecting
involves gathering up golden bones but in the latter
levels, you must rescue animals from cages in order
to fulfill the level criteria.
The game also includes some minor puzzles, which
only become apparent by reading the manual. These involve
doors and switches and while some can simply be flipped,
others require you to fulfill some kind of mission criteria
such as changing flags from pictures of the guard dog
to Jerry. Switches can also activate moving platforms,
giving you access to previously unreachable areas. More
often than not, the switches will simply slow down those
platforms that are simply to fast to jump on.
As I've mentioned, when Tom is armed with a baseball
bat, he can hit his enemies. Players should note, however,
that hitting any of the guard dogs once will only stun
them temporarily. It takes at least another four more
hits to dispose of them completely. I found this aspect
of the game frustrating rather than challenging and
because of that, the first level alone took me some
time to complete. But don't worry, there are plenty
of bonus items and extra health top-ups scattered everywhere
to help you on your quest.
Infurnal Escape uses a password system to save your
game which is available at the end of each level. Worst
of all, it consists of eleven characters consisting
of numbers, letters and shapes and unless you have a
photographic memory, you'll need to write it down or
forget it completely. Come on! This game is meant for
younger players, and the developers really should have
devised a much easier save system.
Control
Once again, considering that this title is aimed
at younger players, the control system is not as simple
or responsive as it should be. The biggest problem I
had was with the "jumping whilst running move",
which is the core move in nearly every platform game
and should be easily executed. In Infurnal Escape, however,
trying to execute this move was infernally difficult
and most of the time resulted in disaster. Another problem
was the slightly skewered "perspective" in
the level design which made precision jumps occasionally
difficult to judge. Added up, all this made for some
pretty frustrating platform action. How it ever got
past the testing stage is anyone's guess.
Graphics
There isn't much to complain when it comes to the
visuals and graphics in the game. On the whole, everything
looks nice and colorful. The addition of screen grabs
from the original cartoons woven cleverly into the game's
story line is also a nice touch. Sprite animation was
also good and just like the cartoon, humorous as well.
Sound & Music
As you'd expect, most of the sound and music in Infurnal
Escape draws heavily from the cartoon. Still, everything
is above average, particularly the Loony Tunes sound
effects that accompany nearly everything that happens
on screen in typical animated style.
Final Comments
Given some more testing and development time, Infurnal
Escape could have been a reasonably enjoyable title.
All the right ingredients are there but the manner in
which they have been put together seems a little rushed
and haphazard (the complicated password save in particular).
If you're a big Tom and Jerry fan then Infurnal Escape
would be a nice addition to your collection. If you're
not, then I recommend you look elsewhere for a really
fun and enjoyable platform game.
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