First of all, allow me to answer a few burning questions on the minds of everyone who has ever heard of this game, or will hear of it in the future.
1. Is this game based on the Dr. Seuss story?
Yes.
2. Does it follow the story closely?
No, not really. Sometimes Sam comes out and there’s a little scene where he offers up some green eggs and ham and is refused, like in the story, but this game is really a board game where you spin a large wheel and play a game of memory corresponding to which space you land on, rather than a Dr. Seuss story. (If you win the memory game, you get to compete in a minigame where you run around in a car or rocket or some such and collect green eggs and ham.)
3. Will I…want to play this on a boat? Want to play this with a goat? Want to play this on the shore? Want to play this with a whore?
No. You should not play this on a boat, you should not play this with a goat, you should not play this on the shore, you should not play this with a whore; you should not play this here or there, you should not play this anywhere! (‘Cept for maybe a couple minutes with a bunch of friends if someone actually picked it up for whatever reason and your boredom scale is in the red zone.)
Seriously…this game really doesn’t do the book justice.
Setting aside the fun factor chat for now, I feel like ranting about the other aspects of the game for the moment. Specifically, the three aspects listed in the center of that helpful little GameCola score chart. Firstly, audio!
Now…I don’t really know what I was expecting from Dr. Seuss music, since I mostly read the musicless books instead of watching the tapes, but I certainly wasn’t expecting what I heard. Honestly, I find most of the music in this game to be just plain irritating. The intro music (which you’ll have plenty of time to listen to during the unskippable intro that plays when you turn on the game, telling you all sorts of useless information about the game that is usually reserved for ending credits) sounds something like the “special” cousin of Mario 3‘s music.
Some of the other music feels like someone’s mashing my head with a trash can lid when I listen to it, and altogether the music is reeeeeeeeeeally repetitive and annoying (similar to my .hack reviews when I tell you to play the games in order). There is not one BGM I can listen to in the game for long before I have to turn the sound off. The sound effects are not as annoying, but they are nothing special, either, so it’s really the best idea to just turn the sound all the way down on your GBA/GBA SP before playing.
The controls are simple. You, basically, only need to press one button the entire time. Sometimes you have to move the cursor around, but most of the time you just need to sit with your finger over a single button in order to effectively play this game. The game even has a giant icon of the button appear on the screen when you need to press it. In other words, a one-fingered person could instantly master the controls. Only the blind person has a reasonable excuse for not being able to figure out how to play this game.
And last of the trio, but not the last as far as this game is concerned, visuals! They aren’t bad, but they aren’t good, either. They aren’t the worst I’ve ever seen in my life, but they just do not hold a candle to just about anything else on the GBA. Of course, this is not so much a case of failed graphical work as it is purposeful cartoonery. The graphics match up well enough with the drawings we’ve seen in Dr. Seuss books, so the fact that they aren’t nearly as good as most other games can’t, reasonable, be held against them.
And now, onto the fun! Fun fun fu fu fu fun fun fun…This game isn’t much of that. I don’t want to say that this game isn’t fun at all, because it can be enjoyed for a short time if you play it with a friend or two, but the fun really doesn’t last. This is not one of those games you’ll be coming back to over and over for hours and hours every day. In fact, I can’t even guarantee that you’ll have any desire to even play it for one hour. As this is the case, the replay value is naturally low. If you wouldn’t even want to play it for long one time, why would you want to play it over and over? Of course, since it’s a board game instead of an RPG or some such, it automatically is easier to pick up and play a new game whenever you feel like it. For that reason, it has to be given a point or so for replayability.
If you can somehow manage to find this game for around $1.99 or less, or if you are a reeeeeeeeeeally big Green Eggs and Ham fan, I would recommend picking it up. Otherwise, you’d be better off keeping your distance.
