Buzz Buzzard is up to his old tricks, and once again, Woody Woodpecker is called upon to ruin his plans. However, this time, rather than battling for some lofty ideal, or to gain treasure of some sort, it’s personal.

Woody Woodpecker: Escape From Buzz Buzzard Park, a DreamCatcher and Universal release for the PlayStation2, is an arcade romp through a variety of three-dimensional locations. Unfortunately while the game does a nice three-dimensional job where the environments are concerned, sharply rendered characters and lack of a rotating camera are both setbacks.

Buzz Buzzard has kidnapped Woody’s niece and nephew, Splinter and Knothead. When Woody returns home, he finds the duo missing and a note stating that if Woody wants them back alive, then he had better find one million dollars. Otherwise they will be held hostage forever in Buzz’s new theme park.

The box shot, supposedly a screen shot, shows fresh-faced woodpecker youngsters, all wide-eyed as the shadow of Buzz looms over them. Get into the game and either the television has selective color rendering, or those kids have the worst bloodshot eyes seen recently.

Woody immediately heads to the theme park to try to thwart Buzz. As he enters the park, there are several buildings in a circle. One has what amounts to a hitching post beside it. Curious, Woody approaches the building and seems to get stuck in a twitching frenzy (graphical stability problems, actually) where both he and the world shakes from side-to-side.

Both are examples of video breakdown of the game. And there seems no rhyme or reason for the camera angles presented. Most of the time it is in the follow mode, but at times – particularly when Woody is required to move across the screen – the camera angle takes up a vantage point that makes it impossible to see where you are about to jump. This may be a leap of faith, but that isn’t one of the selling points of the game.

The sound is also less than satisfactory. Garbled utterings pass as dialogue, and the sound effects are repetitious to the point that is seems this game was rushed out before it was finished. Obviously, because all the levels (approximately 30 of them) are intact.

The controls are solid and do allow you to do some interesting things with Woody. You can have him jump, the attack, which will put him into a dive bomb flight with that incredible beak of his.

Like any good arcade game, there are things to collect along the way, and Woody has a finite amount of lives to expend as he traverses the park, solving puzzles to advance and battling Buzz’s minions or avoiding his traps.

Despite being a fan of the irascible Woodpecker, it is hard to like this game. The graphical rendering of the characters are very sharp-edged, the camera angles hinder gameplay at times, the sound is definitely lacking, and the paths through the various levels seems to be quite linear. This is not a game that will appeal to many who like solidly built arcade-style action/adventures.

This game is rated for Everyone.

Gameplay: 6
The game is linear and play is interrupted by load times. All this is true to the arcade nature of the game. The camera angles can hinder gameplay.

Graphics: 6
The three-dimensional environments are well rendered, but the characters lack smoothness. There are some interesting animated effects, such as Woody’s kamikaze dive, but overall the animation is average.

Sound: 3
This element was severely overlooked. Instead of actually talking, the characters mumble gibberish.

Difficulty: Easy
The control elements are kept simple, which is a good thing. And because it is an arcade game, you do have lives to spend, so failing once or twice to accomplish a task is not a bad thing.

Concept: 5
With recent events in the real world, one wonders about the timing of putting out a game in which children (albeit cartoon characters) are snatched from their home. When viewed simply as a game, this one really does not tread much in the way of new ground.

Multiplayer: N/A

Overall: 5.9
This game had the potential to be fun, but bogged down through poor camera angles, and a few graphical problems.