From the days of Dirk the Daring to the awesome scene in Titan AE where ships are flying through an ice cavern, I have always been a fan of Don Bluth. It’s no surprise then that as soon as I saw mention that he had a game in the App Store I rushed over to buy it. Truth be told, even had I read some of the bad comments about it, I probably still would have bought it. After all, it’s Don Bluth. Unfortunately, like Stephen King and The Lawnmower Man, it’s a shame that the name Don Bluth has to be associated with Banjo The Woodpile Cat.

For those of you too young to remember, or the few that didn’t care, Don Bluth and friends helped pioneer the concept of FMV – games where you watch a series of videos and at key points interact with the video to guide it along. The twist with Don Bluth was that instead of live action video, everything they did was animated. Banjo takes that concept and brutalizes it. The game is based off of a short film made in 1979 – or rather, by the looks of things, IS the short film created in 1979. It appears that they just took the film, broke it up into scenes, and every now and again threw in a quick flash on top of part of the screen to indicate where you should tap to help the “game” progress. The problem is, when you make the action to fit the scene instead of the scene to fit the action, the game just isn’t any fun.

Please Don't Eat Me!

Half the time you can guess where the spot you need to click is going to appear without even thinking about it. When you click on the spot within the appropriate amount of time, the video just keeps on playing, so you don’t really feel like you’ve done anything. At least with games like Dragon’s Lair there was a slight pause before the action continued so you could understand the fruits of your labor. When you mess up you’re “treated” to a scene of Banjo getting his tail end clobbered with windshield wipers. Either this is the only add-in segment or it’s from a scene later in the film, because I can’t find any connection between it and what I’ve seen so far in the game. It just seems out of place and ridiculous.

The only redeeming factor is the animation, which is vintage Don Bluth all the way. The characters have an American Tail feel about them, the animation is smooth and of a high quality, and the imagery just looks great. The sound is also of animation quality since, of course, it’s part of the animation. The only new music is the banjo riff that plays during the menu, and it sounds like a 30 second piece that loop ad nauseam. I think it was literally giving me a headache after listening to it for a couple of minutes while writing this review.

Personally, I would have much rather paid $5 for the short film than the $2 I did pay for this abomination. Now if you could watch the film in it’s entirety when you were done with the game it might almost be worth it, but right now I’m too annoyed with it to find out if that’s even possible. Do yourself a big favor – skip the game, and see if you can track down the video instead.

Final Verdict: Not Recommended
App Store Link
App Shopper Link

[Note: image courtesy of App Shopper]