The first Frogger that came out on the Xbox Live Arcade was a bit of a disappointment to say the least. A true waste of money. Konami knew about a week in that Frogger was not a good idea. They need to impress gamers.

So they release Frogger 2, now i know that earlier on last week i said that Frogger 2 would be worse than the first one. I was a bit hasty. In Fact Frogger 2 is better than the original.

The story tells the tale of Pico, a hapless alien who crash lands in Firefly Swamp, home to where Frogger lives. Upon crashing into the water, pieces of his UFO are scattered in different locations. For whatever reason Frogger takes it upon himself to retrieve the parts to help his new friend find his way home.

Frogger 2 has a visual style that would lead you to believe it’s for young kids. Im telling you now that it is not! It’s too frustrating to be intended for anyone above the age of ten. Frogger and Pico are both equally cute and everything has the big, bright and colorful palette, but the gameplay will drive most right up a wall. Fortunately, the look of the levels stays a bit more varied than the standard swamp-inspired stages. Now if only the levels took up the whole screen rather than being confined to a very odd 3:4 ratio.

The key difference in the actual gameplay compared to the first Frogger is that instead of just crossing from one endo to the other, this time you are slowing working you way through the level and avoiding traps colecting pieces. There are checkpoints in this game but it is hard to judge where these are and Frogger 2 gets very fustrating quite easily.

The controls are not great to this game, using the analogue stick is hard as Frogger makes a move too many and you can end up missing your jump quite a lot this way, so use the D-Pad at all times.

As for the multiplayer, you can play with four people over Xbox Live, but there is no Local Multiplayer which is disappointing so no fun for kids at home who dont play over Xbox Live.

Verdict

Gameplay: 5

Longevity: 4

Sound: 5

Graphics: 5

Overall: 5

“Better than the first Frogger, but still not worth buying”