Reviewed: December 28, 2008
Reviewed by: Jeff Gedgaud

Publisher
Gamecock

Developer
Red Fly Studio

Released: December 2, 2008
Genre: Action
Players: 1-2

4
5
6
4
4.8

Supported Features:

In creating the world made of fantasy creatures on a small scale where you can kill off other creatures and even platform move using the simple controls of the Nintendo DS you would think they would keep things simple and Red Fly Studios tried. But things maybe a little too simple as the story is kind of lost on the Nintendo DS and the moves make it a bit hard to fight off other creatures as well as making the platforming a bit tough.

Mushroom Men: Rise of the Fungi takes a vivid story of a meteor changing life on earth and mushrooms and other creatures are brought to life. You play as one of a few mushroom characters and fight your way across various levels using common objects as your weapons and gear.

The story is kind of lost in the words of the Nintendo DS that is quite common to most of the handheld games but you can figure it out pretty easily. They have little helper quotes along the way to get you used to new moves and such toward the beginning but the moves are complicated by the visuals.

Your village of mushrooms is attacked and you must venture forth to save the day, or some such, storylines are never that important in many games and this one does follow suit. You have some simple item collecting and fighting off bad buzzing insects and even worse dark fungi that are trying to prevent you from your goal of peaceful existence.

You have a 2.5 dimensional view so you can move left and right on the screen as well as up and down according to levels and some objects will pass behind you or in front of you at times. The view is not very good as sometimes during moves you are jumping to objects off screen, which makes some jumps or movements a trial and error sort of affair.

Sometimes clues are not given at all and it will take a good puzzle solving exploration to get past an obstacle or area. The game does give you some clues but a good example is the first level, you knock a knife down from a higher level and it sticks in the floor.

You can walk past the knife so I did not know you could also jump onto it to get to the higher level again when you’re down on the basement floor of the map. This made me wander around the level for a few minutes searching in vain for a way back up.

This sort of thing happens often but the combat is also just about as bad, you have enemies like insects and other Mushroom Men but hitting them seems to be a random fact. You usually just swing until you hit them as the small screen and such small weapons on small fast moving objects makes for some real guess work when aiming.

Weapons and gear consists of common objects you would find in a normal house or yard like toothpicks, nuts and string and you can combine them to make better weapons or objects. The gear screen and combining objects works well but it is hard to tell if one weapon works better than others when you’re wildly flailing about you in combat and not knowing how many times you’re hitting an opponent.

The action is mixed with the platforming so there was no problem of one aspect being too featured but the game just does not work well overall for several reasons. The map and screen are fine but you often do not get to see enough of the immediate area to tell where you are supposed to go or what you are supposed to do next.

When moving around your tiny world you will often fall a short distance and die due to not moving by the correct path and this becomes one of the more infuriating parts of moving around. The game does not have a decent amount of hit points for your men as one small fall results in death but you can fight with several insects for a minute or two without much effect.

The graphics are decent enough but something needed to be done with some areas where you just cannot see enough of the area for platforming. Using the grappling hook is fun but when you’re swinging to a platform half out of sight it makes for some nerve-racking leaps.

The audio is good and has some appropriately odd sounding music that kind of defines the word funky making the game work well for background music. There are sounds other than the background music like a slight swoosh when you jump and other sound effects that add enough noise to the game to make things work somewhat well in the area of audio.

This game does have more audio effects than other Nintendo DS titles and was probably about the best part of Rise of the Fungi. The textures, graphics and effects were pretty decent but the small scale when fighting and things off screen really took away from the graphics.

The game will last a decent amount of time if you stick with it but control issues and often getting killed by simple falls will frustrate your progress. Another frustration is the constant changing from stylus to controls when you want to use the object combining and having to switch from one set of controls to the other.

You can choose a stylus heavy scheme or one with more of the control buttons but you will have to use both in playing the game so you will constantly be switching from the pen to the buttons. This makes moving from battles to equipment switching an exercise in finger movements and constant switching with the stylus will be common no matter which scheme you choose.

I found the Mushroom Men: Rise of the Fungi for the Nintendo DS a slightly below average action game that just had too many small problems adding up to a not fun game. The handheld version of Rise of the Fungi may be better off rented than purchased if you are really interested in the small world of Rise of the Fungi.