Frogger: Ancient Shadow Critic Reviews

This is a clean, simple, and fun platform game that has plenty to offer gamers of all ages. Kids can enjoy it for the cartoonish nature and silly comedy, while elder gamers can use it to de-stress after the latest round of "Call of Duty" or "F.E.A.R."

The inability to skip through movie cinematics hinders the enjoyment a bit, especially since so much of the gameplay involves trial and error.

Surprisingly, this latest Frogger adventure is quite solid.

The main problem with Frogger Ancient Shadow, however, is that's its too difficult to play. The controls take a little getting used to.

The single player campaign is dragged out and filled with the same puzzles over and over, and there isn’t a whole lot of depth to the multiplayer portion either. Although it’s possible for some kids and people new to the series to have some fun here, Ancient Shadow doesn’t quite hit the mark as a whole.

There's an attempt to keep things endearing here, but making the game as tough and frustrating as it is and then aiming it at the young ones isn't a wise move.

The game doesn’t have a defined audience: older kids will find the game too slow-paced and easy, while younger kids will get frustrated with the touchy controls.

Lastly, with 30 levels, you would think that there would be plenty to do in Frogger. Unfortunately, the levels are simple and short, so the length of the story mode won’t last more than an afternoon.

The control mechanics in the title, initially jarring and overly complicated, aren't likely to mesh well with younger players, and the die-and-retry level design can be tedious.

I'm completely turned off by a game that doesn't suck. The controls are solely to blame for that. They stink.

Ancient Shadow doesn't bring anything new to the table, and, what's worse, none of the problems from the previous games have been fixed or improved.

The classic Frogger series seeks to shine again, but instead cannot seem to get with the times, due to frustrating controls and stale gameplay ideas.

I still don't know why I have to press L and R to rotate a frog. Is he robotic or what?

An uninspiring platformer with unintuitive controls, bland gameplay, repetitive environments, and a missed target audience – kids aren’t going to have neither the skill nor the patience to play this game, if they even have the desire to.

It's definitely preferred to the average character-based kids' games; just don't expect to cast your Tony Hawk or Katamari aside to play it.

So, curse you Konami, for releasing Frogger: Ancient Shadow, which made me scream and throw my controller, and thank you Konami, for releasing "Frogger: Helmet Chaos" , which I had some fun with.

The only thing that saves this game from getting a big fat zero is that the graphics look good, it has plenty of bells and whistles (costumes Frogger can wear, multiplayer, challenge mode, etc.) and the background music goes well with the levels.