Animals are a videogame staple, be they ridiculously speedy blue hedgehogs, canine companions or huge, long-legged chickens that poop magic. If a game's aimed at a young audience then you can bet that there'll be some anthropomorphic, inanely grinning creature giving a thumbs up on the box. Animal Genius, however, is a little different - or at least it's trying to be. It's an educational title where you're tasked with finding and collecting a variety of animals from locations around the world. Through trivia and simple games you build up a menagerie of creatures, ranging from monkeys from the rainforest to fish from the bottom of the ocean. Bearing in mind that this is very much a game that wears its child-friendly heart on its safe and furry sleeve (anyone over the age of seven should definitely stay well away), does Animal Genius have enough to entice the wee ones, or is it another case of "children's game" meaning the same as "lazily developed embarrassment"?

The aim of Animal Genius, as mentioned above, is finding animals. There are five locations to explore, each with five animals to discover and learn about. To find the animals you engage in mini-games, gaining the points you need to unlock an animal and move on to the next. At first glance you could be forgiven for thinking that there are five stages to the game, one corresponding to each of the five locations that your search for animals takes you to. Sadly, you would be mistaken; rather than having themed games for each of the diverse locations from around the globe, the developers have decided to feature the same mini-games each time - exactly the same mini-games. So, no matter whether you're finding a polar bear in the Arctic or a Zebra in the grasslands, your choices are severely limited.

The mini-games are at least varied, taking the form of some simple Pac-Man clones, a scratch and see challenge, and two different types of matching game. The Pac-Man games are the best of the bunch, with four different animals to choose from and a decent selection of mazes to work your way through. The other games are little to write home about; the two matching games involve nothing more than pressing the stylus down at the correct time and the Scratch and See, whilst an interesting use of the DS hardware, is far too simple, even for the age range that Animal Genius is aimed at. Unsurprisingly, once you've played one of the mini-games all the way through to completion, there's very little reason to play through again, leaving you doomed to trudge on, repeating the same tasks over and over ad infinitum, slowly but surely losing the will to live. Throw in the fact that every time you've gained enough points to find an animal then the next one will cost you more, eventually forcing you to play each of the mini-games more than once, and any attention that the game had captured is quickly drifting away.

Animal Genius's presentation is as underwhelming as its gameplay; the front-end menus are simple, colourful, and welcoming enough, but once into the game proper there's no real spark. Everything's functional and works fine but there's nothing original or indeed interesting enough to hold your gaze for any length of time. Again it's the Pac-Man maze levels that fare the best; visually they're reasonably endearing, even verging on sweet. There's a charm to the aesthetics of these sections that shows what the rest of the game could have been like if only the developers had taken a little more time with their creation. Worst of all is the asinine American voiceover running through the whole game, which is quite frankly the worst thing I have ever heard; ear-puncturingly, nose-bleedingly bad. Not only that but it's entirely unnecessary, simply repeating things that are already on the screen. I understand that the game is aimed at an audience much younger than me but I'm still pretty sure that the intended audience has the ability to read - and if they don't, I'm still sure they'd rather blunder around poking the stylus at the screen trying to work out how to do things than being told what to do by a patronising, sugar-sick American voice.

As a tool for learning, Animal Genius doesn't have enough going for it to be considered viable. It lacks any sense of fun or enjoyment to tether the educational aspects in with the mini-games. Scholastic has released a half-hearted Educational Videogame that fails at both of the tasks it sets itself. If you're looking for a way to teach your child about animals then I'd suggest buying them a book or taking them to a zoo; if you're looking to buy them a game to keep them quiet then there are hundreds of other DS titles that will do the job an awful lot better.

Reviewed by Harry Slater for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).