The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron Boy Genius: Jet Fusion
The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron Boy Genius: Jet Fusion | ||||||||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Say hello to my little friend!
| ||||||||||||||
|
The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius: Jet Fusion is a video game released in 2003 based on the CGI animated TV series The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius as well as the television film, "Operation: Rescue Jet Fusion". The console version was developed by Krome Studios, the same people behind the Ty the Tasmanian Tiger series, while the GBA version was developed by Helixe. In the game, the player controls Jimmy Neutron who has to save the movie star/spy Jet Fusion by using a variety of gadgets and inventions. An Xbox version was planned, but ultimately cancelled due to the low sales of the game.
Plot
Jimmy has an assignment to write a book report, and decides to invent the Virtual World Reproduction Machine (VWRM), a device that will show the class what the book is about like a movie. Jimmy places his Jet Fusion book into the machine and it malfunctions, thus turning Retroville into a virtual world. Then Professor Calamitous kidnaps Jet Fusion and it's up to Jimmy to save him. Throughout the game, the player has to collect pieces for major and minor inventions, which help Jimmy continue to the next level. The one major invention in each level helps defeat the boss in the boss level, while the one minor invention in each world helps Jimmy battle his enemies and various obstacles. The minor inventions also come with a primary and secondary action.
Bad Qualities
- Almost all characters from the show and special are absent from this game, such as Nick, Libby, Hugh and even Carl. A perfect example of this is in the cutscene of Jimmy presenting his work to his class, you can see that the only students present in class are Cindy, Sheen and an unknown boy.
- For some reason, this game ignored Cindy's design change on the show and decided to keep the original design of the movie. Not that there's anything wrong with Cindy's old design (and this problem is present in other Jimmy Neutron console games), but when you make a game out of a TV special, keep things consistent with the show!
- The level designs are lazy and poorly worked and the variety of enemies is tiny, like at school (the first level of the game), which is filled with only two types of enemies, not to mention that both recycle the same model, changing only the textures and an additional glasses, they are also obvious copies of Butch, a character from the series.
- Also, this game has backtracking, yeah, and you missed that one, you must find the items that couldn't be found and you must uses right gadget to solve this and get the item.
- The boss battle are ranging from mediocre to outright frustrating. These bosses has poor level design for the level, particularly for Cindy Bosses.
- The Cindy bosses is the absolute worst boss level, you must shoot the machine by using the bubblegum gun, but due to Cindy's dog that can be annoying, it's going to kill you and if you die, you must start all over again. Not only that, but combined with poor level design and frustrating difficulty, it make things more tedious and downright frustrating.
- The control while okay, suffer for poor control, specifically for chasing and rolling ball section.
- The cutscenes are also poorly done and lazy, with the main flaw being the character animations.
- Goddard, for some reason, manages to speak in this game.
- The voice acting for the new characters is terrible (at least for the enemies).
- Much like the previous Jimmy Neutron game on GBA, there is yet again, still no save feature, instead rely on passwords. Even Spyro: Attack of the Rhynocs has a save feature.
Good Qualities
- The graphics, although a little weird, are decent, especially compared to Jimmy Neutron's previous games. Also, this is one of the few games that managed to make a good Jimmy Neutron character model, the other being Attack of the Twonkies.
- Coach Levi, an exclusive character in this game, is a nice and friendly person, especially compared to the coach from the original series.
- As mentioned above, the controls are okay, despite that it suffered for poor controls.
- The gameplay is acceptable, at least if the levels are not poorly designed, and the game can be fun at times.
- The plot is decent and it's faithful to the TV Movie counterparts.
- The Game Boy Advance version is decent, and is instead an action-adventure game.
Reception
Reception of the game was mixed. GameRankings gave it a score of 63% for the GameCube version, 50.75% for the PlayStation 2 version, and 57.80% for the Game Boy Advance version; while Metacritic gave it a score of 60 out of 100 for the GameCube version, 50 out of 100 for the PS2 version, and 61 out of 100 for the GBA version.