Completion Time: 2h:12m:00s
Rating: 4/10

....................................................................................................

Fun For Some Ages

....................................................................................................

More small games that I’m trying to get out of the way, what gives? Well, I’ve already explained I’m sort of paving the way to Halloween since I missed several horror write-ups last year. And what better way to do that than do some quick completions and blog posts on minor kiddy games that don’t have a lot going on? I can’t think of one! I wasn’t really a Tonka kid growing up, I might’ve had a dump truck, I think. But I know that plenty of people are, and it’s a brand that was hard to escape for a good many years through the toys, but also games and even TV shows. So, let’s jump into that unfamiliar territory with a GameCube entry from that very series.

The whole world is your playground!

....................................................................................................

Someone Needs Your Help!

....................................................................................................

These cities are disaster areas, with speeding criminals and lost cows, stranded hikers and busted bridges, and apparently the Recuse Patrol funding is incredibly restricted because you’re the one doing all the jobs! There’s a sort of foreman that stands around and barks orders from his tiny window as you dash to increasingly larger problems, but he doesn’t do anything. You are the one thing keeping each of these locales from completely falling into chaos and disarray. But every now and then you can at least stop putting out fires to move some dirt around. There are a lot of jobs to be done and not a lot of hands to take care of them.

Only you can prevent forest fires. You. Literally only you, no one else is even trying.

So, there are 4 levels: city, farm, another city, and mountain. You start out with only the first city unlocked, and you unlock others by beating missions. The gameplay is simple enough: the foreman screams you hop into your vehicle of choice, and you’re off to the races. You can pilot the helicopter to rescue stranded people and lost animals, the cop car to redirect traffic and capture criminals, the firetruck to put out fires, all sorts of things. The real issue is you can’t sit with anything for too long, because the moment one task is finished, another task requiring a different vehicle crops up. Now this is a game for little kids, so there aren’t any time constraints or penalties for not doing a job correctly, this isn’t that type of game. The foreman will, however, continue to yell at you. I cannot stress enough how annoying that is. You can actively be doing the task and he’ll be popping in to tell you how to use the horn or the searchlight, and he will NOT stop. There’s no way to turn him off and I can’t stand it. Don’t tell me how to honk the horn, the damn thing barely works anyways so I’m not using it!

I know how to use the searchlight, but people are dying in a mudslide dude!

The design of the games levels and assets works well, for what it’s worth. Everything has a sort of disgusting, plasticine feel to it like those Tonka toys that you can play with. It’s strange to complement a game’s aesthetic on being gross in this way, but it fits here whereas it might not elsewhere. Getting the visuals down is an important part of the game feel for things like this. And it’s about the only positive I have here, that and the fact that there’s at least something to do in this game. Maybe I’m just negatively reflecting on Dora more and more as I go on. I’ll get over that purple planet… someday…

Don't pay rent, entire complex gets demolished. Simple as!

....................................................................................................

Completing the Game

....................................................................................................

Completion is as straight-forward here as it is in plenty of other places I’ve been covering recently. Just make your way through the game, beat all you can, and there you have it: 100% completed! This is more interesting in a sense, though, given the way you progress through the 4 stages. Each level has 12 tasks to complete, getting higher quality metal medals as you finish them. Once you’ve beat the last task, it boots you straight back to the map screen. Get the hell outta here, you’ve made everyone’s lives better already! Nothing to see here!

Pull over, or you will be fired upon

There’s also the garage, where you can clean off your vehicles and add decals. I don’t know the purpose of this garage other than to waste time, though. You can do early Powerwash Simulator activities with a helicopter here, buff out the scuffs, and then apply some sick-ass flames if you’d like. But then what? It doesn’t save this off, as if you leave and come back to the garage the items are dirty again, and the paintjobs no longer exist! These different motifs for your vehicles don’t even seem to carry over to the regular game itself, so why bother? At least let me see my decals as I’m driving around the city pulling over speeders. This feels particularly strange, so hopefully I’m just stupid and did something wrong, this does NOT seem like that’s how the garage is supposed to work. But regardless, the point is, the garage offers nothing by way of completion.

Would be cool to clear snow while decked out with a flame decal, but oh well

This is better than something like “Dora Purple Planet Panic” or whatever the hell that was called, because at least there’s gameplay here. Things that you can actively do, buttons and flashing lights to keep you investigated. Now, some might call that a detraction when compared to something that might be seen as more educational. But I say nay, in this case, because I would argue that the Dora game made me stupider, whereas my playing this was net zero.

This is another entry in a series where I go through and complete every GameCube game, as it is the largest part of my video game collection. GameCube Games: 41/652