While it does have its stronger points, notably later in the game, The Emperor's New Groove's graphics generally leave something to be desired. The camera clips through any and everything, showing the Void inside of buildings, under hills, and much more. You can occasionally see through the texture seams on the ground as well. The environments themselves feel a little sparse, and a few of the levels feel like they were generated in some sort of map-maker program in a matter of minutes. (Witness the little sides on almost every ramp in the Village.) While a few levels are genuinely pretty -- I especially liked a few of the Forest stages -- it's not a beautiful game by any stretch of the imagination.

The scenes from the animated movie, which are pretty much a requirement in any Disney platformer nowadays, seem to have transferred quite well. They generally pertain to what's going on in the game at the time too, so that's a pleasant change from, say, Buzz Lightyear to the Rescue. It's nothing that'll stun you, but it helps the transitions between the areas and stages.

The sound in Groove isn't quite as mediocre as the graphics, fortunately. The sound effects are strictly second-rate, but the voice acting is absolutely solid, with Kuzco the llama playing the quintessential smart-aleck, and actually sounding funny most of the time. It's a lot better than the wisecracking in, say, Gex. Be warned that the fourth wall is broken regularly in the game, but since it never takes itself too seriously, that works out for the best. The music is passable but forgettable, with nothing that'll really stick on your head, but nothing that'll make you run for the Mute button either.

"Passable but forgettable" might not be a bad way of describing Groove as a game, too. While it's pretty entertaining for a while, in the end, it comes up like we all knew it would be -- a poor Spyro clone. It's got its moments, but in the end, it just doesn't shine half as bright as our favorite purple dragon.

For the most part, you control Kuzco the "demon llama," as he tries to get back to his rightful form as the (human) emperor. Kuzco moves a lot like Spyro, with charges and whatnot. Instead of breathing fire, though, he kicks and rolls. It amounts to pretty much the same thing, though.

There are occasions where you get to do something more interesting than straightforward platforming. For example, there's a rather sweet Track and Field tribute, although it hurts my fingers. And Kuzco can transform at certain parts of the game into different animals, which is cool. I liked the Turtle race at the beginning, but some of the later transformations are neat too.

In the end, though, Groove just feels uninspired. The levels are often painfully linear or have only a few branching points of interest, although the special abilities that Kuzco has are used occasionally in a cool way (shooting inflatable beasties was high entertainment); as a general rule some of his moves feel completely useless. I never used the kick, instead rolling over any and all enemies in the way.

The game itself is actually quite easy, and an experienced gamer could probably beat it in a longish day. It's not particularly challenging, although sometimes you fight with the controls more than you do with the enemies. For the most part, though, Groove's difficulty level is just right for the audience it's aimed at: kids.

But my biggest beef is with the artificial difficulty put in the game. You only have one life (with five health) normally, but you can collect Wampies to give you "continues" (which, in this game, means lives). But if you want to go back to a level you've been to before to collect all the coins, you lose all of your continues. What's up with that? I can understand losing the continue you got from that level, but why should you lose them all? This discourages exploring levels after you've beaten them.

For the most part, the control in Groove is pretty solid. It has its quirks, though. For example, jumping to the secret area in the first level can be a trial in frustration, until you figure out the magic (and arbitrary) way of doing it. And the camera has serious issues, often causing you to walk off of cliffs because of a sudden change in angle. It also tends to stutter when you go through a doorway or something similar. The menus, on the other hand, are clear and understandable, both easy-to-navigate and useful.

PS2: The Emperor's New Groove benefits from the Fast disc speed option on the PS2, reducing the already-short load times to near trivial. It's certainly not necessary, but it's nice to have a platformer that loads as fast as Groove. Unfortunately, the Smoothing feature does more harm than good -- the skybox looks terribly seamy, as does the world map, and the polygonal graphics don't really show much of an improvement.

In the end, The Emperor's New Groove is a passable platformer, but it offers nothing particularly new to the genre or anything that'll keep you playing after you beat it. If you're a major fan of Disney stuff, or liked the movie, it may be worth a purchase, but the rest of us should stick to the fantastic Spyro the Dragon series instead. Notwithstanding the llamas, there's no reason to settle for second best.

I did like the running "demon llama" joke, though. Reminds me of my days on IRC.