Product: Danny Phantom: Urban Jungle
Approximate cost: $30
Rarity:
What it is: Nintendo DS game based on the TV episode Urban Jungle
Overall rating:
Reviewed by: Firefury Amahira

Commentary
The gameplay is COMPLETELY altered from the TUE game. For those here who are gamers, I can summarize the gameplay as "Gradius meets Ikaruga". The game plays as a side-scrolling shooter (like the two flying stages from TUE), but incorporates a red/blue "polarity" feature that is blatantly like the black/white color switching from the top-down shooter Ikaruga. It's certainly much more engaging than TUE's repetitive "kill everything that moves" gameplay. Also, by getting hit with energy shots that match Danny's polarity, you can recharge the ghost power meter very easily.

Which brings me to the ghost powers in the game. The most useful is intangibility (labeled in-game as the "Danny Phase"), as while intangible you can fly through obstacles without taking damage and you're basically invincible. The second most useful (especially once you get good at utilizing the polarity thing to recharge the ghost power meter) is the Ghostly Wail. It blasts everything on screen (and unlike the TUE game, it uses the appropriate visual effects and a decent sound effect to match), and will do serious damage to bosses. As you progress through the game, you unlock the various powers, and you get the Wail right before the final level. The ice power is moderately useful against Undergrowth, but the fire power seems to be utterly extraneaous. Both are vastly less useful than the Ghostly Wail once you obtain it.

You also get to use a small arsenal of Fenton weapons. There's the BOOmerang which will attack ghosts on screen. It's moderately useful in the first couple of stages when the only ghost power you have access to is intangibility, but its use decreases as you gain more powers. The other gadgets you get to use are only for trapping ghosts, which does two things: It gives you power up items you can stockpile to recharge the ghost power bar in a pinch, and the ghosts you trap are added to your Gallery. You start the game with the Fenton Thermos, which is alright to start with, but the Ghost Weasel has both better range and power. The Fenton Fisher will catch anything on a straight line, and you can launch it up or down at an angle. It's good for catching the bigger ghosts, but that's about it. The last gadget you get is the Ghost Gloves, which have virtually no range to speak of, but can catch the biggests ghosts with ease. I find the Ghost Weasel the most useful.

Your primary weapons are Danny's ecto-blasts. There are four levels of power, and it generally doesn't take long to pick up enough power-ups to boost the blast power. There are four blast types as well: Normal (what Danny starts every level with), Pierce (flies through barriers and will continue travelling even if it hits a ghost), Homing (a normal-type blast straight ahead, with a secondary blast that will home in on enemies), and Laser (a straight line blast all the way across the screen, sustained for a few seconds.) The single most useful blast type is Homing. At level 1 it fires a blast straight ahead and a single homing blast. At level 2 it fires a single blast ahead, and two homing blasts. At 3 it fires a single blast ahead and two more powerful homing blasts. And at max level, you get the single shot straight ahead, and three powerful homing blasts. As you will often find the entire screen swarming with enemies, the homing blasts and their ability to hit things that are behind you is invaluable. Laser is useful when you want to "scan" the entire screen, since it fires a large sustained beam that you can scan up and down with. Pierce is only really useful on bosses like the Lunch Lady or Evil Sam that have several obstacles that the other blasts can't pass through. You can charge your blasts as well, but I find this generally not useful. Charged blasts are more powerful, but the time it takes to charge can cost you a lot of damage. I find it better to just hold down the fire button the entire time.

One twist to the gameplay is World 4. This group of levels play as a tunnel-shooter much like the original Starfox, where you are flying the Specter Speeder (in-game called the "Fenton Flyer") through the Ghost Zone, blasting ghosts and dodging obstacles. It could have been executed better, but it's still some of my favorite gameplay in the entire game. Just make sure you absolutely abuse use of the Speeder's lock-on blasts. (Basically you'll be holding down the fire button the entire time, and hammering the B button.) The Speeder has three extra functions you can use (since you don't use ghost powers in these levels). The first is the Specter Deflector, which puts a shield around the ship until you shut it off or run out of power in the green power bar. The second is the bomb; it boosts the Speeder's normal shots in size and power until you shut it off or run out of power. I didn't use it much. The third is the Radial Bomb, a timed-delay explosive that uses the entire power gauge but will wipe out everything on screen. I found it useful against the level boss- Youngblood's ship. (I have to say, the way that ship tears around the screen is a delight.)

In addition to the main game (with three difficulty levels), after you beat the game once you can play Boss Battle. I suggest you take a spin through the main game on Easy and Normal at least, and try to complete the entire first page of the Gallery before you go to Boss Battle so you'll unlock all the opponents. Boss Battle is substantially more difficult than the main game is, since like in Boss Rush mode from TUE, your life bar carries over between fights. In Boss Battle mode, you only have intangibility, the ice power, and the fire power, and at the start of each battle you can get up to level 3 blasts and one blast-type of your choice. (I prefer homing for most fights). Health items and power ups will appear intermittently, but be warned- if you want to get anywhere in Boss Battle mode, you will NEED to utilize the polarity thing. Some of these guys will spray red and blue blasts all over the screen, and you will not last long unless you master switching polarity to absorb blasts. Intangibility is a godsend in several of the fights. The final two rounds of Boss Battle are particularly difficult: In one you take on Spectra and Desiree at the same time- and they tend to spray different blast colors at the same time, making it tricky to navigate without taking damage. In the other, you're going one-on-one (and occasionally one-on-three) with Vlad, and he has some absolutely NASTY attacks that play havoc with switching polarity.

On to the game's story. It actually doesn't follow the episode hardly at all. Sure, you fight Undergrowth (no less than four times, even if you are forced to lose the first time), and Plant Queen Sam. In fact, I would say that the game finishes covering material from the episode by the end of World 3. After that the story is original material, but really rather simplistic. You fly the Speeder into the Ghost Zone to stash Undergrowth's core somewhere secure (Walker's prison), but it gets ganked by a bunch of escaping ghosts that you then have to go after. You chase down Technus in the computer world based largely on the game DOOMED from Teacher of the Year, and then the Lunch Lady brainwashes Tucker and you have to take out a giant Tucker-shaped meat monster. THEN Undergrowth and the Lunch Lady team up and create "Meat-N-Potatos", a meat and veggie monster that again resembles Tucker. You take that thing out, then you fight Undergrowth again, then the Lunch Lady, and then Undergrowth returns for one final showdown in front of Casper High.

On a more technical note, the game controls work very well, they did a surprisingly good job of making use of the touch screen. You tap the Heart icons or green goo icons to use those power up items if you have any- that's the only game control that it handled ONLY by the touch screen. You can use ghost powers with the B button (selecting with the L button), or you can just tap the power's icon in the bottom screen to use it. I find this handy- I'll use the B button for one power (usually intangibility), and if I need to use anything else, I just tap it on the bottom screen. You can cycle through your acquired blast types with the X and Y buttons, or simply tap the one you want on the bottom screen. Polarity is switched with the R button, and the rest is pretty straightforward. My biggest gripe about the actual game engine is you need to pay attention to your health and your polarity- there's no sound effect or cringe graphic or anything to indicate you've taken damage, and while Danny flickers with a red or blue effect to indicate your polarity, it's easy to get mixed up when there's a lot happening at once.

Next up is sounds and graphics. The background music is decent, but not terribly memorable. Most of the tracks sound a lot alike (and I played with Sound Test mode when I unlocked it to check the tunes out), but you can tune the music out pretty easily. The sound effects for blasts and attacks are all pretty good, but you'll generally hear them so much that you'll start to tune them out. Honestly, you could be listening to an MP3 player or something and not miss a lot. Though sound cues are sometimes handy for predicting and evading certain attacks. The graphics are a mixed bag. The character graphics are alright, but not spectacular. Danny is nicely animated, but he's so small on the screen that you don't really see it. The nameless ghosts look for the most part like slightly revised versions of their TUE appearances, but the bosses look great and are pretty nicely animated. Where this game's graphics really shine though are the backgrounds and the Specter Speeder levels- all in cel-shaded 3-D. What's more, is they managed to render a 3-D version of the show's art style for the backgrounds that works and looks good. Seriously, all locations shown in the story scenes look great, and accurate to screenshots from the show. I would use them as reference material for my own rendering projects.

Overall, the game is still fairly short- you can probably beat the game in about an hour with little trouble, and probably complete everything in less than five hours. (Maybe more if hard mode and Boss Battle give you some trouble.) It's still more fun to play than the TUE game, and a decent addition to a DP fan's game library. The manual mentions a "Multi-card play" mode, but doesn't specify what this multiplayer mode is. I'm going to guess it's some sort of two-player cooperative mode. If my friend Kitsuja picks up a copy of the game, he and I can test it out the next time we get together and I'll add it to my review.

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