VeggieTales: Larry Boy and the Bad Apple

The first thing I noticed when I fired up “LarryBoy and the Bad Apple” was how LarryBoy just throws super hero conventions to the wind. Not since Kal-El of Krypton donned a pair of spectacles and starting calling himself Clark Kent has a disguise been so easy to see through. His real name is Larry the Cucumber and his super hero name is LarryBoy. Hmmm. Wonder how long it will take the villains to see through that. Not long apparently because in the first 10 minutes of the game super villain Bad Apple shows up at the LarryCave violating yet another rule of super heroing. Keep your secret lair secret! When Bane found the Bat Cave he broke Batman’s back (see Batman #497). In LarryBoy’s case Bad Apple arrives at the LarryCave with a Whitman’s Sampler. Apparently, LarryBoy has a problem with overindulging on the chocolate. It’s like his kryptonite. A little careful prodding from Bad Apple, “Did you know white chocolate doesn’t have any caffeine,” and LarryBoy is trapped in her web of temptation.

You start the game trapped in a world modeled after LarryBoy’s temptation. It’s kind of like Willy Wonka land with chocolate rivers and platforms made of chocolate chip cookies. LarryBoy bounces around jumping and double jumping from platform to platform trying to find his way out of temptation.

To add some spice to the jumping puzzles he’s equipped with a cape that has several abilities. The first is the ability to glide by holding the jump button after jumping. There are several areas that require LarryBoy to make long flights to get to the next area. The next cape feature is the Heavy Weight Cape. LarryBoy wraps the cape around himself and transmogrifies into solid metal. Obviously a really heavy solid metal cucumber can’t do a whole lot of moving around, so this is cape feature used primarily to activate pressure switches scattered around each level. Lastly, when standing on certain platforms LarryBoy can activate his Energy Cape to become a radioactive cucumber. Besides the obvious health drawbacks this creates for anyone who might want to put him in a salad, it’s also useful for opening doors and activating electronic gizmos in some levels.

While the cape gets a lot of attention, a good superhero isn’t complete with just one gadget. In addition to his cape, LarryBoy has plungers attached to his cowl that he can use as grappling hooks. They also allow him to activate out of reach switches and buttons. He also sports a water gun filled with sports drink that has multiple uses ranging from watering seeds that become new platforms to jump on to blasting objects in boss fights. Both of these gadgets require switching to a first-person view complete with a FPS-style reticule in the middle of the screen. I’m one of those gamers that prefers my controls to be inverted in first-person scenarios so I headed to the menu to see if that was an option. I’ve been disappointed in the past by kids games that don’t allow you to invert the Y axis, but LarryBoy and the Bad Apple surprised me by not only allowing me to adjust the Y axis, but also the X axis and the aim deadzone. I’ve played FPS games for grown ups that have less options than that. Way to pay attention to detail!

So you’ve got all the gadgets and gizmos but these aren’t going to be enough. LarryBoy’s butler, Alfred the Asparagus, pops up in a little window in the corner and informs LarryBoy that escaping from temptation requires a help from others. Alfred then proceeds to pop up about every 20 seconds and give LarryBoy hints on how to tackle the area he’s in. These “hints” range from just flat out telling you what to do to access the next area to thinly veiled hints on which gadget is needed to proceed. There’s occasionally some witty banter between the two, but more often than not Alfred is just here to point you in the right direction.

While exploring LarryBoy’s temptation world you’ll meet the three basic enemies in the game and get to try out Larry’s WhirlyBird attack. The WhirlyBird is as simple as it sounds. LarryBoy twirls around smacking down everything in his path with the plungers on his head. This takes out the Grunt enemies easily as they meander around aimlessly. Throwers are a bit tougher. They shoot balls of temptation at you that Larry has to toss back by timing his WhirlyBird attack just right. The last enemy class is the Seekers. These guys are too strong for LarryBoy to take out so he has to get close enough to get their attention then lure them to a nearby air vent. The seekers get sucked into the vent solving Larry’s problem. When you reach the end of the temptation world you’ll be greeted by a boss fight with Bad Apple herself. These are really more like puzzles than boss fights and require a little bit of creative jumping and attacking to finish.

Of course, Bad Apple’s plan to ensnare Bumblyburg in her web of temptation doesn’t stop with LarryBoy. She’s also locked other prominent Bumblyburg citizens in their very own worlds of temptations. After successfully escaping his chocolate nightmare, with Alfred’s help of course, it’s now LarryBoy’s turn to help the citizens of Bumblyburg escape their temptations. Each new world is based on that individual's temptation. TV reporter Petunia Rhubarb’s world is a TRON-like world based on video games while Fire Marshall Grape’s world is based on his obsession with toy collecting. Each world is a new experience and utilizes LarryBoy’s powers in different ways. It’s a great way to keep the game from becoming just another stale platformer.

In each world you’ll have the chance to unlock various bonus items by collecting musical notes and sheets of music. These unlock movie clips, songs, images, and mini games. The first few are self explanatory so I’ll focus on the mini games. You’ll be able to compete against a friend in Tic Tac Toe, a Memory-style game, and Darts. Each of these has a slight twist that involves the use of LarryBoy’s powers or LarryBoy himself in the darts game. They won’t any awards for sure, but it’s a nice addition to the main game.

Gameplay: 7.5

The gameplay in LarryBoy and the Bad Apple is what you would expect from your average platform game. The one oddity is the fact that LarryBoy has no legs. He hops around via short little bounces. Until you get the hand of his peculiar method of locomotion you might move a little closer to a ledge than you had intended and fall off. The various gadgets are fun, but their uses are so obvious that it’s rare that even the youngest of children will be unsure how to proceed. If they do get stumped, Alfred will spell out the solution for them anyway.

Graphics: 8.0

There’s an exception to every rule and this game is the exception to the “kid’s game have lousy graphics” rule. The graphics do a great job of bringing the Veggie Tales characters to life. The levels are meticulously crafted and each temptation world is more interesting than the last. Character animations are well done and I only had one or two minor camera issue the entire time I was playing.

Sound: 8.0

Veggie Tales is known for its singing and dancing cast and the game doesn’t cut any corners. The voice work is superb and the sound effects all have that cartoony feel to them.

Difficulty: Easy

LarryBoy and the Bad Apple is a children’s game so I expect it to be a tad easy for me. What I don’t expect is for the game to hold the player’s hand through every single part of the game. Alfred constantly pops up telling you which way to go and what to do. When I was a kid, I didn’t need a talking stalk of asparagus to tell me when to make Mario jump. I’m sure kids these days can figure out what they are supposed to make LarryBoy do without being told every time.

Concept: 6.0

You’ll travel to various thematic worlds that draw their inspiration from each characters temptation. It’s a novel approach to platforming that… Hey, wait a second. Didn’t I play this game last year when it was called Psychonauts?. I hope the Veggie Tales crew has the Chewbacce defense ready for when Tim Schafer comes a-suing.

Multiplayer: 6.0

Three of the mini games, Tic Tac Toe, Memory and Darts provide a little bit of same screen multiplayer action. None of them will keep your interest for long but they provide a good opportunity for parents to play alongside their kids.

Overall: 7.2

LarryBoy and the Bad Apple is a game I can recommend to any parent. Not only does the game feature a good lesson in moderation it also is a pretty decent game. Fans of the show will absolutely love it and even kids that don’t watch the show should enjoy the action. On top of all that the game even stays true to the moderation theme by including a built in timer that parents can use to monitor their kids play time. It’s good clean righteous fun. What else could you ask for in a kids game?