Despite his star having faded a bit from the public's eye in the couple years since his movie's release, Crave Entertainment is hoping to bring fans back to Preston, Idaho for another off-kilter helping of the wacky antics of Napoleon Dynamite. In this videogame offshoot of the widely popular movie, our lanky, fuzzy-fro'd wonderboy must brave thirty or so mini-games as he attempts to capture his escaped llama Tina in time for a party with Pedro's family. But where one recent mini-game laden, late to capitalize on a movie's launch title - Jackass the Game - was a mild success in terms of entertainment provided, Napoleon Dynamite suffers a relentless barrage of steaks and locker slams that leave the final product as downtrodden and lifeless as a dead wolverine in the freezing snow of Alaska.

Now, I think its safe to say that if you have any thoughts of picking this game up then you get the impression that you're not in for a blockbuster, triple-A title - the gaming world is not going to be set ablaze by the revolutionary ideas of this budget title. However, the hope for a decent title that supplements the movie experience isn't a misplaced desire and indeed this that should, at the very least, be the developers' overall goal. This leads to ND's biggest flaw though - it fails miserably to bottle any of the magic and humor that made the movie such a cult hit. Everything, from the storyline to the mini-games to the art design to the dialogue, has been slapped together with so little care that one has to wonder if the developers ever watched the movie and instead just gleamed details from a written description and a handful of memorable quotes.

At first glance, the game's paper cutout style aesthetics and heavy use of Napoleon's notebook doodles seem to be a natural fit for a videogame. Objects are literally scotch-taped to the background, actual notebook paper - lines and all - are present and characters are made in the cutout style of South Park. But spend a couple minutes watching the game in motion and see how quickly a positive can be spun into a negative. Backgrounds are barren, repetitive and made up of far too much of the same overused Napoleon doodles that fans have seen plastered on a variety of objects since the movie's release. The digital stills used for the characters' faces - of which Crave only licensed Pedro, Napoleon, Kip and Uncle Rico - are wretched, looking even worse than the blurry, washed out versions seen in the PSP version. These little, nearly motionless paper cutouts make the game feel like an interactive popsicle puppet theater designed and run by a young child.

The sound department finds itself receiving even more neglect than the visual side though. Choosing not to tap the actors for any original voiceovers, the developers simply superimposed a tiny helping of sound bytes from the movie into the game at strange, seemingly random intervals. For example, during the mini-game 'Singing,' where you are supposed to be Kip 'singing his heart out,' random Kip sound bytes are played depending on how you are doing. Most of them at least make sense in the context of succeeding or failing the mini-game, but then you'll randomly get the 'your mom goes to college' line, which has nothing to do with singing, succeeding or failing. To make it even worse, the sound quality and volume of the sound clip is exactly the same as it was in the movie - quick and quiet. If you don't have the volume on your DS up high enough then it's quite possible to never hear the line at all!

Sloppy presentation or not, nothing from that area would save the gameplay from its horrible fate of disappointing all who fall into its hands. In Story Mode you control Napoleon as he attempts to find his escaped llama Tina before his Grandma comes home. Along the way, Kip, Pedro and Uncle Rico interfere in some way or another to give reason to prompt the thirty terrible mini-games between cut scenes and text boxes that don't make a lick of sense (and this is coming from someone who has seen the actual movie quite a few times). The dialogue in the game is brain-numbingly bad, consisting of either bland, unfunny lines written specifically for the game or the poor implementation of the movie's memorable lines. It's a mess that not one single ND fan should be forced to endure.

Once into the actual games themselves, things only get worse. Unlike Jackass the Game, which molded its mini-games around concepts that may have actually come from the show's masterminds, this game fits Napoleon Dynamite around game concepts ripped from the Atari 2600 days of only the most basic of mechanics, A.I. and controls, making the entire package feel forced and stilted. There's a game where you shoot, one where you jump, one where you dodge, one where you… I think you get the picture. Dodgeball may be the deepest game in the entire collection because it asks the player to throw and catch - two concepts at once! These games are all just painfully one-dimensional, which makes playing them a one-time affair for the average gamer, who will exhaust everything that each mini-game has to offer in a single play.

Had these mini-games been constructed with a little more complexity then it may have been possible to glean some enjoyment out of them, but it's impossible to pull meat off clean bones. I find it hard to see more than a handful of people pushing through Story Mode completely and even less repeating play until they've earned high score gold medals on each mini-game. The same thing goes for multiplayer and the uninteresting extras - they're there, but 'good' intentions don't make for replay value of any kind.

And if you were wondering if the DS' unique capabilities were used to possibly enhance this version over the PSP one, then wonder no more as the answer is a very definite "no". The touch screen is pretty much all this game uses and it uses it in very limited, obvious ways, such as to emulate button presses. Had the developers embraced the DS as more than just a way to expand their potential user base then some creativity could have found its way into these mini-games and a decent game could have been produced. Instead we have a bad PSP game made worse with dumb-downed graphics and no real DS functionality.

If this was your first videogame in twenty-five years then you might not notice any of the problems - especially in the gameplay department - that plague Napoleon Dynamite The Game, but for anyone who can consider themselves a gamer there is nothing here worth even a portion of the admission being asked (which is $10 more than its superior PSP version, although that's like comparing eating dog feces and cat feces, there's no way to come out a winner). It doesn't matter if you are the movie's biggest fan or a young child who can only play simple games; this shovelware deserves no space in your home.

Reviewed by Tony Peters for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).