On Reflection

Unbelievably, due to a cascade of titles that are just that little bit less pants, since its release; Frogger appears to be even worse than we remember. You could have more fun repeatedly stabbing yourself in the knees with a sharpened, frozen stoat.

The Score

Good news Crystal Quest! You’re no longer the worst game on Xbox Live Arcade! The ‘Champion Of Chuff’ crown has been stolen by Frogger, which didn’t so much steal the crown as gate-crash the Really Bad Xbox Live Arcade Games party, kick over the punch bowl, strip naked, call everyone a [censored], wipe its knob on the curtains and then jump out the window.

The idea of the game is you cross the road and get to the other side. Already this sounds incredibly dull (or like a really bad ’why does the chicken cross the road’ joke) but no! Scratch under the surface and there’s excitement too! Because stopping your frog from crossing the road are cars, lorries and disappearing logs! Wait, no... that’s still boring. But look! Here comes the excitement! Later in the game, you’ll also have to put up with a snake, a brown thing that we think is supposed to be a beaver and... well, your own boredom. Okay, we’ll admit, the biggest obstacle to getting a high score is the fact that Frogger is about as fun as chiselling “HATE” into your eyes with a scalpel.

Here’s the fun part. There are only four controls for this game – up, down, left and right. Yet somehow, despite only having four controls for the ENTIRE game, they’re still unresponsive! A real achievement. Have 50 GamerPoints. This makes an already bad videogame even worse. How Frogger has managed to scrape together a reputation as a retro classic is beyond any sort of rational explanation.

The only people who like Frogger are retro gamers, who tend to like any videogame made pre- 1956 anyway, and people who have never played a videogame in their lives before. If you don’t fall under either of those categories, stay well away.

2 out of 10