Castlelian review - Nintendo Gameboy

Frogs have a reputation as carefree young things hopping about from one lily pad to another, the most strenuous event in their lives being the odd jaunt across the road. Sadly, the halcyon days of Frogger are gone, and today's frog needs to move with the times. In keeping with the technological age, lily pads have been replaced by high-rise multi-storey pads made out of concrete and placed, not in a local pond for children from a nearby primary school to tend, but in the middle of the ocean.

As one of today's get-ahead amphibians, it is your job to hop to the top of each of eight major pads to prove your worth to the webbed-foot community. The target towers in this mission however are harder to climb than most. For starters, they're all infested with evil frog-hating beasts, and the platform and staircase arrangements which usually make things easy have been all but destroyed.

Still it takes more than this to put off our brave green hero in this platform-cum-puzzle game from the Sales Curve. Use your leaping and platforming abilities as well as your brain to work out the best route to the top of each building before the timer runs out...

What the Mean Machines staff thought

I must confess to being disappointed with this. The sluggish nature of Pogo the frog results in progress being made incredibly frustrating. In some cases you practically need to be a clairvoyant to avoid the baddies, because Pogo doesn't move fast enough to get out of their way! Consequently the emphasis is remembering where everything appears and learning the steps to avoid it, rather than using your skill and reflexes to dodge hazards. Once again, with a little more playtesting this could have been a perfect Gameboy title. As it stands it's a fun, but very frustrating platform game which some people may find just too annoying to be worth bothering with.

Castelian is one of those games which should make a perfect Gameboy title. Its simple, fuss-free gameplay is ideal for gamers on the move. Unfortunately, Castelian is prevented from reaching its true potential as a Gameplay classic by all the same flaws as the NES version also reviewed this issue. Although the graphics and sound are satisfactory and the design of the game is fab, there just hasn't been enough playtesting. The collision detection is more accurate than the NES title, and the game moves much faster too, but the unavoidable death problem is twice as bad. At any time, a super-fast enemy might appear and head towards you at such a speed you can't even turn around to run for safety before being hit. Needless to say, this tends to put frustration levels through the roof. Also, your frog seems to have some sort of nervous muscular disorder, as he often takes it upon himself to jump for no reason at all. Perhaps this would be bearable is it didn't mean him leaping lemming-like into the water half the time. The old problem with having to re-play early levels is here too, where is that password setup? Castelian isn't a bad game, it just could have been so much better. To coin a phrase, try before you buy.