Meet George, the undisputed King of the Jungle, a super-strong super-friend with the ability to talk to animals. George, along with his best friends, Ape, Ursula and Magnolia, lives in - and protects - the jungle of Mbebwe. If this seems familiar to you then you have probably watched the George of the Jungle show on Nick Toons, with the above extract from the Wii version's box bringing up fond, or not so fond memories, of the show. Now George is swinging onto the Wii, but does he feel as much at home in this jungle of Nintendo games?

George of the Jungle is a Nickelodeon branded game and so it's aimed squarely at fans of the TV show. This is apparent throughout the game's story, even though it can't really be called a story. In the opening of the game, which I'll come back to later, George and friends are about to play Vine soccer when a bird takes away a book containing the cure for the 'illness', or cold, that Magnolia and Ursula have. As George you now have to locate all of the missing pages of the book and cure your friends of this terrible cold. Yes, the entire aim of the game is to cure a cold, which is the only bit of story to be found in this adventure! Considering that the TV show must have at least some plot, this is a disappointment, and it's just the first of many reasons why you shouldn't take George on his treacherous journey.

You control George with the Wii Remote and Nunchuk, so you would expect the game to come in the form of a 3D platformer; however, it's actually a 2D side scroller, which is a mixed blessing. You jump with A and attack with B, which is to be expected from a by-the-numbers platformer. What isn't expected however is how hard, and annoying, it is to control George with the Nunchuk's analog stick; moving on a 2D plane with eight directions is far more awkward than it should be. This could have easily have been rectified by using the Wii Remote on its side, as in Super Paper Mario, or using a classic controller, which would have made the game a better platformer. But the one thing that means that you must use this broken control method is obvious; it's waggle time.

Once again, a developer has felt it necessary to force Wii Remote waving in to control actions that would work much better with a press of a button, rather than aimlessly waving of your arms. You roll with a wave of the Nunchuk, perform an air stomp with a wave of the Wii Remote and slowly drown in your own tears due to frustration with waggle-based quick time events. Every movement control fails to register, with one particularly annoying action requiring you to rotate the Wiimote in a circle to run at a wall. What rotating a controller has to do with running is beyond me - maybe George is a wind up toy? And being wound up is exactly what will happen to anyone who attempts to play George of the Jungle, thanks to these terribly executed controls.

The control issues aside, the basic gameplay is surprisingly solid, with fun platforming taking place over the same type of terrain over and over again, and slow jumps that lead to death more often than not. Actually, scrap that last part - the gameplay isn't solid at all; it's repetitive in the extreme and sloppily sown together into an inconsistent, linear path. Stealing ideas from every other decent platformer makes the game feel archaic, which emphasises the repetitive nature even more. You will feel like you have played the entire game before - it's that derivative - and though it may feel repetitive because of these reasons, there is one other factor that makes it even more so.

I first played George of the Jungle on the same day that I also played Devil May Cry 4. Which do you think I found the hardest? Yes, it may seem like an overstatement, but George of the Jungle is so hard that it's as though the game is broken! It took me around two hours to complete the first level(!!), possibly due to the lack of lives and a miniscule life bar. While this seemed like a long, hard struggle, I soon found that the second boss was nearly impossible to defeat, something that I was ashamed of myself for at the time. "This is a kids' game," I told myself, "it must be me." But it wasn't - every level is so hard to complete that it's amazing that the game is rated 3+, as there is simply no way that a three-year-old would be able to complete any of these tasks within two lives. And after getting a game over screen, what happens? You have to start from the beginning of the entire level, cut scene and all. Throw in the fact that you can't even skip over these cut scenes and the game drives you to a new level of insanity; I must have seen the opening cinematic around ten times, at which point my interest in playing the game had gone below not being interested and into the realm of pure hatred. No one should end up feeling like that with a children's game, and if an experienced gamer such as myself found the first level so hard, just think how less experienced younger gamers will fare.

As a Wii game, George of the Jungle looks decent when compared to some games of a similar price range, with Game Party and Cruis'n springing to mind. In motion it looks good and captures the look of the show well. The cut scenes don't fare as well however, with characters that look so unlike their cartoon counterparts that even fans of the show will get confused. Magnolia's character model is actually quite disturbing, an aspect of the character that was probably not included in the original vision of the game. The graphics may not be Super Mario Galaxy quality, but they are decent enough, even if much better visuals have been seen in handheld games of recent memory. The audio is better than the graphics, as the game sounds just like the TV show. The voice acting is clear, the sound effects are good and the music has been pulled straight from the source material, so fans should feel right at home. The aesthetics in general give a familiar feel to the game, even though watching the show itself would be a better experience on the whole.

George of the Jungle is a poor effort that, while looking fairly good and staying true to the style of the TV show, features derivative, repetitive gameplay, coupled with such poor controls and such a ridiculously high difficulty that it's rendered almost unplayable. All aspects of the gameplay are poorly executed, making it pretty much devoid of fun to play, with more frustration than you should ever find in a game aimed at kids - as I said above, Devil May Cry 4 is less frustrating! For under half the price of this you can buy the first four Super Mario Bros games on the Virtual Console, all of which show just how weak this effort is. If you're a fan of the show then you're better off sticking to that, and if you want a great platformer then Mario Galaxy is undoubtedly the way to go; for a console that has arguably the greatest platformer of all time in its library, there is absolutely no reason to pick up George of the Jungle, even if the person you are buying it for is a huge fan.

Reviewed by Sam Atkins for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).