James Pond is a game about a cod fighting against toys…
The evil Dr. Maybe is about to blow up Santa Claus’ arctic toy factory and the only person, err fish, in the world who can stop him is James Pond, also known as Robocod. He is a superhero fish with a special armour that keeps him wet and makes him stretchy as hell. A cod? Stretchy? Yes! Quite uncommon for a platformer but he can stretch himself to reach even the highest points in the huge levels.
But back to the story. Dr. Maybe has hidden his bombs in Penguins. So the quest is to find the penguins and save Santa Claus, the world and the happiness of all children. But be careful! The bombs are protected by evil toys - such as card-birds, snowmen, teddy bears, snakes, trains, teeth, gingerbread-men and so on and so forth. After finding all penguins James just needs to find an exit and the level is done. Every few levels he faces a boss-villain. This can be a teddy bear or a snowman (or …). While he just needs to jump twice on smaller enemies to get rid of them, these big ones take lots of hits until they explode. To make the mission easier, there are plenty of bonus items for extra scores, extra lives or extra power and even gimmicks like wings (to fly with) or umbrellas (that can be used as parachutes).
The colourful comic-style graphics is done very well and the sound is quite good (for the first 30 minutes - after that it kills your nerves). James himself is animated very good and fluently. The controls are just fine, too (cursor keys to run, jump and duck and space to stretch). So technically is there nothing in this game I can complain about.
The difficulty is a bit too easy at the beginning and (I must confess) I do not know how it is in the last levels. Oh and talking about the levels: Most of them are too huge and we have millions of different stages. It is quite fascinating to experience how tricky the level designers were. We find levels completely made of rubber (bouncy), golf clubs, candy, fur, levels in black/white, levels that are completely upside down and many more.
It is a nice game! Try it! It’s a 4 for me!