A large selling point of the Xbox 360 for me was the Xbox Live Arcade and all the wonderful retro games I could enjoy from my lifetime of gaming. 27 years ago a little game came out called Frogger that was available for the Atari 2600 or playable at your local arcade. Very simple game play that pitted the little pixilated frog against rush hour traffic and the denizen of the river. Now XBLA has made available Frogger 2 for your downloadable pleasure....if you want to call it that.

Gameplay:

As the game begins our little green friend has meet an alien named "Pico" who's spaceship has crashed on Earth. Frogger then tells Pico that he will help him find the parts to his UFO so that he can go back home. Now that the game finally has a plot other than to get to the other side of the road, we begin our journey across various locals. All seems well when the game first begins as you weave around mazes of bushes, collect coins, and music notes. The friendly frog now has the ability to lash out his tongue to get those hard to reach items and can rotate to which 90 degree angle he chooses to leap. The maps are not entirely visible as they were in the first and they have save points (checkered flags) in case you run into trouble. While this may seem simple to jump forward, backward, left or right to get to the missing UFO parts you run into many dead ends and have to backtrack to get to the right path. This becomes tedious and pointless like the creators were just trying to add length to the levels. Not to mention the touchy controls which even though Frogger was only supposed to leap one step forward he takes two only to lose a life.

The game does have two new multi player modes: Jewel Duel and Race. Both support 4 players via Xbox live, but for some reason offers no local split screen! I had to beg and plead with someone on my friends list who had the game to play just to get a taste of what it was like. The multi player was a lot more fun than the single player story or time trials.

Graphics:

Frogger 2 is displayed in the cutesy cartoon style with bright and vibrant colors. While the game is colorful it isn't bringing anything spectacular to the games library. The graphics give the feeling of playing a children's cartoon show and may deceive some into thinking the game is for kids. Believe me it is far from easy and I wouldn't recommend it for a family game unless you wanted to teach they youngsters what it is like to be frustrated.

Audio:

The wonderful electronic lullaby may end up making your ears bleed and wishing you had attended the last Britney Spears and Boy George concert. The sound effects aren't too bad and fit well into the game play.

Longevity:

Frogger 2 won't last long in the average gamers play list since the story is not even mediocre and the game play leaves a lot to be desired. Now if there was a community of users over Xbox Live the versus modes might make it worth a purchase. But if think you'll find a game outside of your friends list you may have better luck finding the Loch Ness Monster or Big Foot.

Overall:

The game play and story are very forgettable, and the games brightest point, the multi player, won't shine enough to make this a must have game. I was throughly disappointed with the direction Frogger 2 took after having fond memories of the original. If your in the mood to play a game with your little green buddy Frogger, save 400 Microsoft points and download the original version. And here is the question of the ages......Why would they make a game with a frog that doesn't know how to swim?