PHINEAS AND FERB: QUEST

People always tell me I need to watch Phineas and Ferb. I mean, this must be some pretty serious stuff, because it's all I freaking hear. I only watch cartoons pre-1950. Few exceptions. We've been over this. And yet the persistent chorus...persists. I feel like I’m missing something here. Not because of the game. The game sucks. Well, I guess...
I mean, it doesn’t suck. It's just...like, I'm not sure how many ways there are to say the same thing I've said about countless other licensed games that are pretty much the same thing. I feel like the Kraang, at this point. This game that is licensed is the same as the other games that are the games that are licensed.' Phineas  and  Ferb: Quest for Cool Stuff. Lot of presumption in that title, wouldn't you say? I mean, if cool stuff's is just stuff you give to other people...then yeah, this is the quest for the cool stuff. That is the stuff that is cool.

I guess the summer vacation is coming to an end, so Phineas  and Ferb want to live it up. By collecting stuff, for a museum. What a terrible idea. Thought you guys said I was missing something here. So this so-called Quest for Cool Stuff doesn’t involve nunchuks. And boom, that's ten points off the cool stuff scale. Instead, you're going to  be  platforming, which is definitely cool stuff. But in this game, it's not as cool as it usually is.

It's basic side-scrolling. With  an emphasis on basic. You collect the shiny things, stomp on the enemies...this is Platforming 101. It's a beginner's class. For the beginners. Who are the beginners in the class. I'm sorry. It's just that this is kinda boring. So the name of the game is basically fetching quest city. You finish the levels, but then, you’ll get these little requests from people who want you to go back and replay them to find stuff.

So you go back to the earlier stages, with the equipment and powers you've earned since then, to get the stuff you couldn't get before. And that sounds alright, but...again, it's a lot of fetch quests. In big, empty, boring levels. Fortunately, the game plays well. The controls are...sufficient, I guess. The game's mechanics aren't much you can drill through stuff. You sometimes get to play these bonus levels as this platypus thing. This is just...kind of weird game.

You're just going into levels, bringing stuff back, and then going back in. And the layout and structure of this process isn’t exactly intuitive. You're just walking around trying to figure out what to click at first. And for a kid's game? You can't do that. A simple level map's just fine. I mean, I like when developers try to be clever, but...don't do it that way. Do it with the gameplay and level design. Which  this  game doesn't do.

To be fair, this isn't the worst licensed game in the world. For a game like this, it's actually not bad. But...I feel like I say that all the time. I mean, if there's one thing I've learned from reviewing the sheer amount of games I review, it's that...games like this are almost always the same. I mean how about some creativity? I don't think that's much to ask for poor Phineas and Ferb. Which  I'm going to watch one day. I promise.


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