Rugrats : Search for Reptar (PS1) - Quick Review
This review is going back to the PS1 in Rugrats : Search for Reptar. Tommy is at home with his friends when he goes to play with his Reptar puzzle. But when he opens it, the pieces are missing! Now you must wander around the house and find all the missing pieces of the puzzle.
In this game, your goal of finding the puzzle pieces is done through a series of mini-games that are scattered around the house. These are broken up into easy, medium, and hard difficulties. Winning some of these games will reward you with a puzzle piece, while some of them reward you with Reptar Bars. Collecting 15 bars will automatically gain you a puzzle piece. The game is completed after you've located all the pieces and put them together to form the complete puzzle. So let's look at what was good about this game, what was bad, and find out if it's worth it.
The Good
- The characters and cast. This game features all your favorite characters and their actual voice actors from the show, so it fits right in with the nostalgia factor. You play mainly as Tommy when you're in the over-world of the Pickles House, but you'll get to see and play as the others during the mini-games.
- Mini-game references. A lot of the tasks you must complete during the mini-games are centered around stories from the episodes. My favorite was when Tommy and Chuckie get lost in the toy store and accidentally activate the giant Thorg display and must turn on the Reptar one to have them battle it out and everyone be safe.
The Bad
- Mini-game variety. The games that are labeled as Easy difficulty are a lot of fun. There's an easter egg hunt where you have to wander all over the bottom floor of the house and collect eggs in a race against Angelica, there's a mini-golf course, and even a showdown against Mr. Friend. Once you start doing the Medium and Hard challenges though, all they are is mazes or obstacle courses with you needing to find your way to a specific goal. I had a lot of fun with the Easy challenges but once I got to the others it felt extremely repetitive.
- Pointless difficulty levels. Obviously this is linked in with above, but with not having different activities for the harder difficulties, it really begs the question of why bother adding in the difficulty levels. I feel a better choice would have been making no difficulty levels on the levels themselves, but applying a Gold/Silver/Bronze rating to how well you do in the different challenges.
Is it worth it?
This game is beatable in only a couple of hours. So the length alone will shy most gamers away. Really though, if you loved this cartoon growing up, you'll want it merely for the nostalgia. The majority of the levels feature themes based on an episode of the show, so you'll run into a lot of "Oh I remember this episode!" while playing. Search for Reptar will have it's draw for a very small amount of gamers, and unless you're one of them, this game will hold no value for you. So in the general spectrum, I say no, this one's not really worth it. With the condition being that if you were a big fan of Rugrats then yes it might be. It could even be a fun way of introducing your little ones to something you grew up with, which I definitely plan on doing with my son once he's here and old enough.
In this game, your goal of finding the puzzle pieces is done through a series of mini-games that are scattered around the house. These are broken up into easy, medium, and hard difficulties. Winning some of these games will reward you with a puzzle piece, while some of them reward you with Reptar Bars. Collecting 15 bars will automatically gain you a puzzle piece. The game is completed after you've located all the pieces and put them together to form the complete puzzle. So let's look at what was good about this game, what was bad, and find out if it's worth it.
The Good
- The characters and cast. This game features all your favorite characters and their actual voice actors from the show, so it fits right in with the nostalgia factor. You play mainly as Tommy when you're in the over-world of the Pickles House, but you'll get to see and play as the others during the mini-games.
- Mini-game references. A lot of the tasks you must complete during the mini-games are centered around stories from the episodes. My favorite was when Tommy and Chuckie get lost in the toy store and accidentally activate the giant Thorg display and must turn on the Reptar one to have them battle it out and everyone be safe.
The Bad
- Mini-game variety. The games that are labeled as Easy difficulty are a lot of fun. There's an easter egg hunt where you have to wander all over the bottom floor of the house and collect eggs in a race against Angelica, there's a mini-golf course, and even a showdown against Mr. Friend. Once you start doing the Medium and Hard challenges though, all they are is mazes or obstacle courses with you needing to find your way to a specific goal. I had a lot of fun with the Easy challenges but once I got to the others it felt extremely repetitive.
- Pointless difficulty levels. Obviously this is linked in with above, but with not having different activities for the harder difficulties, it really begs the question of why bother adding in the difficulty levels. I feel a better choice would have been making no difficulty levels on the levels themselves, but applying a Gold/Silver/Bronze rating to how well you do in the different challenges.
Is it worth it?
This game is beatable in only a couple of hours. So the length alone will shy most gamers away. Really though, if you loved this cartoon growing up, you'll want it merely for the nostalgia. The majority of the levels feature themes based on an episode of the show, so you'll run into a lot of "Oh I remember this episode!" while playing. Search for Reptar will have it's draw for a very small amount of gamers, and unless you're one of them, this game will hold no value for you. So in the general spectrum, I say no, this one's not really worth it. With the condition being that if you were a big fan of Rugrats then yes it might be. It could even be a fun way of introducing your little ones to something you grew up with, which I definitely plan on doing with my son once he's here and old enough.
