Roogoo is a series of puzzle games that have made the rounds on the PC and XBOX Live Arcade recently. Coming to the Wii and DS now, I initially had heard of the franchise in name only. Sadly I wish it could have remained that way as beneath its cuddly exterior lies a shattered and broken mishmash of a puzzle game.
Graphically Roogoo: Twisted Towers is nothing special. The best praise that can be laid out is that the pastel colored world is clean and runs smoothly. That doesn't mean it approaches anything good. Backgrounds are static images, and the enemy MeeMoos and flying creatures are nothing spectacular either. The bosses look a bit more polished but again, nothing great or even good. The marker for where your block is falling is so lightly colored that you will have to strain your eyes to match them up. This game could have been ported to the N64, playstation, or saturn with ease. It barely uses anything horsepower wise and not even well some of the time.
Musicall Roogoo: Twisted Towers is light and cheery, complimented with appropriate sound effects. This is all well and good, but it does nothing to stand out either. Rare made a habit of taking super childish subj4ect matters and cranking out audio masterpieces, the same came not be said here. Its about as breathtaking as elevator music and some of it might even make you want to kick your TV. Being a simple puzzle game about teddy bears is no excuse, some of the greatest game and movie music has come from the simplest of subject matters.
Where the game really falls completely apart is the gameplay itself. The main core of the game is literally lining up different colored and shaped blocks through matching holes in floating islands as they descend downward. This alone isn't to terrible, but it is absurdly simplistic. Having all the depth of a fisher price toddler toy. Roogoo: Twisted Towers even manages to screw this simple concept up by having a confusing control scheme and a misplaced camera. For almost no apart reason the game uses the nunchuck when it could have more easily just used the remote. As the blocks fall, the islands will randomly spin before each drop to change positions. This kills any would-be strategy the game could have had. To turn the round islands so that the blocks match the correct hole you press the B trigger and the Z trigger. You can't use the left and right on the D-pad or Nunchuck analog stick. To double the confusion, the camera sits at a angled, almost isometric view above the islands. This makes actually turning the islands to fit the falling blocks enormously more confusing then it needs to be. In an attempt to possibly spice things up, you can press down on the D-pad to speed up the blocks falling, use the IR pointer to catch butterflies and bats among other things, and point the IR and press A to throw glass hammers. Sometimes these are crucial elements to a level, and sometimes its just for fluff. But when you combine the already odd control scheme for getting the blocks to fall in place and then focusing on background objects it begins to feel akin to patting your head, rubbing your stomach, while closing one eye, hopping in a circle on foot, all while reciting the Gettysburg address. The main culprit for the extra annoying levels are the bosses, who range from stupidly easy, to frustrating. The ice level boss in particular seems counter intuitive as he randomly "freezes" the screen causing you the manically "wipe and clean" the screen with the IR pointer, all while you have his other attacks and falling blocks and mishandled camera to deal with. Also to mix things up, Roogoo: Twisted Towers incorperates levels that are nothing more then randomly falling blocks that you use the IR pointer to catch them, which actually doesn't work about 1/3 of the time. and freefalling levels where you play as a teddy bear falling to the ground while shooting stars out to defeat enemies in his way. These levels are controlled by the analog stick and A button. They are highly reminiscent of the Konami classic "Gyruss", only slower, less accurate, and far less fun. Think of the Gummi Ship levels from the first "Kingdom Hearts" and then imagine that as twice as boring
Roogoo: Twisted Towers is a functionally broken game wrapped in a underwhelming presentation. Sure there is a story, that is mostly explained in the instruction manual and DS version. There are rarely any "Cutscenes" which even then are handled by a series of still images. Levels, bosses, and areas just come and go without any fanfare. There hardly seems to be any rhyme or reason to continuing forward. Even completing a stage is hardly noteworthy, a small jingle, and a small image of the main character hovers by on a little rainbow band saying level complete. Web based flash games usually have more pizazz for completing a level. You can unlock extra levels in both the DS and Wii version by wireless communication if you have both versions. Which is probably the best feature of the games. The levels unlocked actually feature more polish then the main ones, though nothing that saves the title in any way. but it is a nice bonus, should you be unfortunate enough to receive both titles as a gift.
