Cartoon Network All-Stars

Cartoon Network All-Stars is a collection of four different games, Fast and the Flurrious, Cartoon Cove Mini-Golf, To The Eds-treme Skateboarding, and Dropple. At an average price of $19.99, you are getting a good deal with four uniquely addictive and entertaining games.

Fast and Flurrious welcomes you to the slopes for some snowboard action with the Powerpuff Girls, Bubbles, Blossom, Buttercup and even Mojo Jojo is randomly thrown in there. Here, you race down a snowboard half pipe trying to earn as many points as possible by picking up "power up" pieces and performing tricks in the air on jumps, all the while avoiding trees, rocks, puddles and penguins. You advance to the next round by earning enough points to qualify and not losing all your health due to tumbles.

You can choose a player, a snowboard and the course you want to race. Each Powerpuff Girl has a different level of experience. As a beginner, Bubbles will slowly advance down the course, and the speed gets progressively faster with intermediate Blossom, expert Buttercup, even going as far as Mojo-Jojo, whose level is experience is titled "Bwa-ha-ha," which translates into evilly fast. The courses also vary in difficulty level. The bunny slope is easy and a safe place to practice when first playing the game. You progress through the Black Diamond, Rocky Cliffs, Jump Canyon, Mountain Madness and finally to Glacier Pass, each with a faster speed, more jumps and more obstacles than the previous course.

This game is well suited for all ages as there is a wide range of levels and difficulties. Once you beat a certain level there is room to advance and challenge yourself. The characters and courses are cute and quirky, but the concept of the game itself is limited and can become monotonous. It’s a fun and entertaining game for the first half hour of play.

Cartoon Cove Mini-Golf takes you along nine cartoon-themed holes on a tropical mini-golf island, hosted by cartoon network characters including; Johnny Bravo, Courage the Cowardly Dog and the Powerpuff Girls. After picking from an assortment of colored golf balls you enter the mini-golf island and make your way through the interactive holes, differently themed with their own obstacles. The themes of each hole range from Dexter’s Laboratory to Johnny’s Bravo’s pinball machine to tree houses and beaches.

This is no ordinary game of mini-golf. Each hole poses its own set of obstacles. They become increasingly challenging as you move from hole to hole. It goes from knocking sandbags out of the way in hole one, to avoiding a laser beam that will suck up the ball in hole eight.

The game is difficult at times, as the power and angle you shoot at can be ambiguous. Also, the par for each hole is very conservative and usually difficult to attain, maxing out at par four for holes that seem far more complex than four swings allow. Despite the difficulty, the game is entertaining and a fun spin on the concept of mini-golf. Your assuredly bad score on the first round will make you want to try again for a higher score. You can play on your own or match up two-players.

To the Eds-treme Skateboarding challenges you to sharpen your shredding skills on a crazy skateboard ramp. You must pick up speed skateboarding down one side of the ramp to get as much height as possible on the other side. You gain points by completing tricks and stunts in the air. There’s a catch though: you must land on your feet when you hit the ramp again. You also gain points by catching balloons and birds that are flying high over the ramp. Half the fun is watching how much height your player can get.

Watch out for loose or missing boards though, if you hit them or hit the repairman fixing them you take a fall, which leads to a loss of points and precious time. If you collect enough points you are able to proceed to the next level, which will have new tricks yet more obstacles. With 26 levels, the game keeps you coming back to challenge yourself to reach that next level.

The game has tiny resolution and you only need to use eight buttons on the keyboard to play it. Despite its simplicity it is a fun game as you attempt to send your player into outer space and to do as many fun tricks in the air as possible.

Dropple is a standard puzzle game like Bejeweled where you maneuver colored pieces to have so many in a row or touching each other. Those pieces then disappear but new ones will fall into your puzzle. This is a race against the clock to clear as many pieces as possible before time runs out. In this game the pieces are colorful blobs, keeping consistent with this game’s theme of cartoon cuteness.

In this game you will be visited by such characters as Dexter, Hi Hi Puffy Yum and Billy and Mandy. They will join you in playing four different game modes, each unique to the desire of the player. Some modes are timed, while some have and infinite number of levels to play so you can practice your matching and maneuvering skills. The graphics on this game are very advanced compared to the other three games, and the characters are thoughtfully intertwined with the plot. This game is the most challenging of the three, and is probably aimed for an audience of teenagers and adults.

Overall, this is a neat set of smaller games that will provide ample entertainment.