Croc: Legend of the Gobbos Review

Best Annual Midget Crocodile Race ever!!!

It all began in the Year of the Soupspoon("...at the start of each year, the Gobbo high priestess would announce the kitchen utensil that, when put down their pants, would bring good luck. Gobbos took this very seriously, although some began to question the practice during the year of the electric can opener..." Ed note: We didn't make this up, the story is in the manual...). The Gobbos adopted a cute little one toothed crocodile and raised him as a Gobbo. But all was not meant to be butterflies and jujubees. The evil Baron Dante was jealous of the Gobbos' happiness, so he attacked Gobbo valley and enslaved all the Gobbos. (I swear I'll only say Gobbo one more time in this paragraph.) With the help of Beany the Bird, however, Croc was able to escape. Now, he must free his Gobbo friends from their torture and rid the land of Baron Dante's followers. But what's the point if they've already planned a sequel?

Platform games. What can be said about this genre. They've all been remarkably similar since Super Mario Brothers. You are still weaponless for the most part, still remarkably cute, and still kill your enemies by jumping on their head. So if you buy a platform game, it's obvious that you like that kind of thing, so it's just a question of how weaponless, cute, and bouncy the main character will be this time. In the case of Croc, the main character excels in all three.

The plot, as you can tell above, is your standard, run of the mill, kidnapping fare. You can rescue caged Gobbos on every level, reminiscent of Rayman. The goal of each level is to find the gong that summons Beany the Bird to take you away in a shower of sparkly glitter. This game is really, really cute.

Much like Mario 64, Croc is played from the third-person perspective. Even though the Saturn does not have nearly the same amount of polygonal processing power that the N64 has, it still manages to make Croc look pretty good. The polygons are sharp and clean, and move remarkably smoothly. The Playstation version is even sharper, with less polygonal breaks. Graphically, this game gets high marks.

What about sound and music? Again, nothing to complain about. The music is generally non-intrusive, which is actually quite good because I hate most platform music. The sound effects, however, are fairly well done. Croc's cute little voice rings loud and clear when he yells, "Kablooie" and "Kersplat!" Did I tell you that the cute factor was remarkably high for this game?

The biggest problem with the game is the play control. Stiff and unwieldy, it's hard to get Croc to do what you want at first. Pushing right and left turn Croc while forward and back are absolute movement. This makes it fairly hard to aim your jumps in a fast paced game. Do you have Nights for the Saturn? If so, you might be thinking that that beautifully crafted analog controller could help you in a 3D platform game. No such luck. If fact, it's harder to control Croc with the analog controller then it is to use the regular digital one. Sadness. . .

All in all, Croc is a decent 3D platform game. Nothing to write home about, but nothing to dismiss either. If you like platform games, then this is a good bet. If you don't, go buy some blood and guts fighting game. Do be warned: This game is excessively cute. If the Care Bears make you cringe and the Smurfs make you lose your lunch, you will not like this game. Don't say I didn't warn you . .