Let me begin by saying that this is by far the best Rugrats game that I have ever played. I'm not saying that this magical title is impervious to future usurpers, but for now it stands alone as the king of baby games. That being said, this is also the only Rugrats game that I've ever played, and it does little to persuade me to expand that particular gaming library.
At first, Rugrats in Paris: The Movie (RIP for short. Ironic) actually fooled me into thinking that it was an adequate platformer for its time. This illusion lasted all of 45 seconds. I decided to change things up with this title and start my evaluation with the multiplayer mode. Basically, it consists of four minigames, three of which have very unclear goals. All of the mini-games are played with an alternating player system, and can support up to four players.
The first mini-game, ski ball, is what initially fooled me into believing that this game wasn't terrible. It actually seemed pretty straight-forward. Whoever scores the most points wins, right? Wrong. The entire points system is based entirely on the collection of tickets that arbitrarily appear along the path of the ball. The position of the tickets often interferes with the path that leads to the highest point locations, and it wasn't until after the round was over that I actually knew about the ticket scoring system. Needless to say, I just assumed that they were some kind of bonus, and proceeded to mostly ignore them and go for the big points. Expletives flowed like a river from my mouth when I realized my mistake.
The second mini game started me off in some sort of bumper boat-like device and gave absolutely no explanation as to what I was supposed to do. There were tickets laying around, and by now I had learned my lesson about their value and decided to collect them. Aside from the tickets, the only other things that provided any sort of interaction were these strange little statues that started dancing and singing if you knocked into them. I randomly decided that I was supposed to activate all of them at once. This proved impossible, however, and I ended up just collecting all of the tickets until time expired. I ended up scoring 13 points for literally puttering around and collecting tickets. I fail to understand how that qualifies as a game. Adding my accidental 3 first-round points to my total, I now had 16 points overall.
I failed to mention earlier that I had a choice of six Rugrats to choose from when I started the mini game challenge. I picked Tommy because I'm not an idiot and I know that he is the freshest baby around. The other choices are what you would typically expect: Chuckie, Angelica, Phil, Lil, and Chuckie's asian sister. The reason that I bring this up now is that in game #3, it doesn't matter who you chose to represent yourself. Because when the game started, I was a frog. It makes absolutely no sense that I would be controlling a frog. Last I checked, there were no green, slimy Rugrats. I don't think that there was even a black one, let alone one of a different species. All I'm saying is that this seems like a strange time for diversity. Anyway, this game actually was straightforward despite the frog issue. I was tasked with eating as many bugs as I could within a certain time limit. Essentially, I could rotate on my lily pad and stick my tongue out to ensnare my prey. I ended up snagging every single bug and was very proud of myself. Proud of myself, that is, until I saw my score for the round, which was a cold, hard ZERO. What the hell? I know that up until now the scoring was entirely based on ticket collection, but there weren't even any tickets in this game, just bugs and frogs! Cursing Christ for allowing this game to be created, I decided to hold off on killing myself and try out the last remaining game.
This game, called Bumper Cars, started me off in the same bumper boat vehicle as game number two, but instead of water, I was in a little bumper car arena with three other characters. The goal of this game was to have the most balloons at the end of a two minute period. Bumping the other characters caused them to ejaculate their balloons, after which they could be collected. I hit each character a few times until I built up a lead, then went and hid in a corner and watched the other idiots battle each other. They never thought to chase me. When the round ended, I had the most balloons and was therefore the winner. But I wasn't going to get my hopes up, because once again no tickets had been involved. However, the game arbitrarily awarded me six tickets for being the victor! Now why on earth couldn't it give me any fucking tickets for my epic bug snatching performance?! Some mysteries will never be solved, I suppose. Another question I have is why couldn't this game be played in split screen mode? Instead, it forces each player to alternate competing against three computer-controlled players. It just seems very inefficient.
Now that I had become sterile playing the mini-games, I figured that I might as well try the adventure mode, which, after all, is supposed to be the main reason for playing the game in general.
I once again selected Tommy from the same pool of characters, and promptly began my "adventure." I started off in Reptarland, a fictional amusement park that I'm guessing was featured in the actual film. The first thing I noticed was the presence of those god-forsaken tickets. With a heavy heart, I began to collect them while wandering around this amusement park wasteland. To say that the controls were loose would be a compliment. They were horrific. I would aim for a ticket, and end up hitting a wall a full three feet away. I mean, I get that babies aren't the most coordinated creatures, but can we just pretend for the sake of my sanity? For fuck's sake. Anyway, I honestly couldn't figure out what I was supposed to do besides wander around and collect those stupid tickets. I don't need to play a game for this kind of experience. I could just wander around some abandoned fairgrounds or something. It would probably be slightly more creepy and significantly more fun. I did keep seeing signs for mini games, but seeing as how they were the same damn games from multiplayer mode, I wasn't about to go anywhere near them. So instead I scoured the area and scrounged together about 13 tickets. I them accidentally located some sort of ticket exchange building in an obscure corner. I figured I would be living large, considering that I had just spent the last 15 minutes collecting all of the tickets in the area. I was quickly pulled back into reality, however, when I realized that the cheapest item was 60 tickets. I guess I was supposed to win more tickets by playing those awful mini-games, but I just didn't have any gas left in the tank. And besides, I have no idea what the items did or if they were in any way associated with advancing through the game. The one that cost 60 tickets was baseball glove, and I don't think that would be very useful to a baby. Frustrated, I switched the game off and walked away from this nightmare forever.
In conclusion, RIP is a terrible game, and I do not recommend it to anyone, unless you have some sort of baby fetish or are looking for a few laughs.
FINAL SCORE: 1.5/10
I don't care if it follows the movie or not. I wanted to follow IT with a hit of something. I gave it an extra .5 because the cartridge is black instead of the traditional gray.
-Joe
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