The Fairly OddParents: Breakin' Da Rules
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The Fairly OddParents: Breakin' Da Rules is a video game released for the Game Boy Advance, GameCube, PlayStation 2, Xbox, and Windows in North America in 2003. It is based on the Nickelodeon cartoon The Fairly OddParents. It was developed by Blitz Games and published by THQ.
Note: This page only focus on the console and GBA version, and not the PC version
Plot
Timmy Turner's parents have gone on a vacation and left Timmy with evil babysitter Vicky. When Timmy tries to make a wish, his fairy godparents Cosmo and Wanda tell him that it's against "Da Rules". Outraged, Timmy wishes he didn't have to follow the rules, leading Cosmo to destroy the book. When Vicky arrives, she gains possession of Da Rules. She wishes that Timmy was still sleeping, and since she has possession of a fairy item, her wish is granted. Timmy, Cosmo, and Wanda go to Fairy Court, where they're accused of destroying Da Rules, and Jorgen gives the three of them 49½ hours to find the book's missing pages. Timmy must navigate through ten levels and find the pages before Vicky's wishing goes too far
Why It Break Da Rules (In a Good Way)
- The plot is well done and faithful to the source material, as it focus on Timmy wanting to make a wish but it is against "Da Rule", and he wish that he doesn't had to follow the rules, howewer because of this, troubles happen and he need to do something so that everything goes back to normal, which is an interesting premise.
- The graphics in the GBA version are very good, as the sprites are very well made and the colors are vibrant, the console versions also look decent for it's time but didn't aged too well.
- Solid and responsive controls.
- The gameplay is fun in both versions, and the console and GBA version had different gameplay style to obviously fit for the console abilities.
- The console releases are a 3D platform game, and the platforming is pretty fun and also, the game include puzzles, which are interesting and the game also had ton of variaty so that it's not repetitive.
- The GBA version is a run and gun, and a very fun one because it is more challenging and there's a lot of variaty too, even if the run and gun genre doesn't really fit the franchise this game is based on.
- Very good soundtrack composed by John Guscott and Matt Black, as the musics sound like something you would hear in the show, and the soundtrack fit the game too.
- Ton of power ups, including:
- Wish Star - A large star that powers Cosmo and Wanda's training wands. Five are needed to grant a wish. They often run from Timmy and try to get him caught by various guards.
- Crowns - Each level has an abundance of crowns similar to the ones worn by all fairies that when completing a set of one hundred, give Timmy a one-up.
- Timmy Head - Gives Timmy an instant extra life.
- Crimson Chin Cards - There are four Crimson Chin cards in all but the final level that reward the player with bonus videos found in the main menu.
- Great voice acting in the console versions, as the actors reprised their roles and they sound just like how they did in the show.
- The difficulty is very casual for young players since the game is neither too hard nor too easy, while it is a bit easy, at least you will not having that much troubles to beat the game.
- The characters models in the console versions are great and faithful to the show art style, also it is impressive how they managed to do them this faithful back then since translating the show art style to the 3D is very hard, though they mostly managed to do it because of the cel shading.
- A decent numbers of levels, which make the game fairly long as it last 5 to 6 hours.
Bad Qualities
- The graphics didn't aged too well, as sometime the game can look dull after a while and the backgrounds and levels look a bit more like something from a PS1 game, albeit upscaled and more detailled.
- The GBA version is very short, since the game can be completed in only 1 to 2 hours.
- The Game Boy Advance version, while great, can be very frustrating at times because you die in only one hit, and sometime there's too much enemies that appear on screen.
- The camera is quite annoying because it constantly move and because of that, it can include lot of painful deaths or cheap hits.
- The console versions are a bit too easy because it is easy to dodge enemies attacks and there's not a lot of enemies too, which can be boring, fortunately the sequel would be more challenging.
- Way too much dialogues or cutscenes that interrupt the game too many times to the point of being annoying and often it is for some dialogues that are not even important at all, fortunately you can skip them.
- The gameplay is a bit repetitive, especially in the GBA version.
Reception
The game received mixed to positive reviews, in Metacritic, the PS2 version had a score of 60/100, it was also popular enough to spawn a sequel named The Fairly OddParents: Shadow Showdown.