Disney Pixar's Ratatouille gives you control of Pixar's latest creation, Remy, as he explores huge areas, collects food and tries to fulfill his dream of becoming a world-class chef.

Ratatouille looks really good. As you would expect from most license titles that come out these days, characters look just like they do in the CG movie, while locations have the same French flair to them. But like I said, having the game look like the license it is based on is rather expected these days and doesn't necessarily grant it any points in the long run.

Where the graphics do get noticeable is in the animation. I couldn't help but notice a lot of little details that just made this game feel more real. One such detail is Remy's slipping, slightly out of control look and feel when you run over a dirty piece of tile or a slick pane of glass. This particular animation is perfectly coupled with a "slipping" sound effect that adds to the overall effect.

The rest of the audio aspects of this game aren't all that bad either. Voice acting isn't stiff and conversations flow fairly well, though there were a few times when the sound seemed a bit clipped. Background music tends to fit the environment you are exploring and it really helps to set the mood for the game.

The game of Disney Pixar's Ratatouille follows the same basic plot of the movie. Remy, a rat with a dream, realizes that though he wishes to become a gourmet chef, no bakery or restaurant in France would dare hire a rat (the customers might have a problem if they found out a rat was making their meals -- no matter how tasty). So when Remy helps a down-on-his-luck busboy create an amazing soup, the busboy is immediately promoted and Remy has to stay in his pocket helping him come up with even more ingenious recipes.

Now that Remy is a ghost-chef, he must run around rather large 3D levels hunting for foods to make his next great meal, while avoiding humans, weapon-stealing crabs and a whole slew of other enemies that are determined to keep Remy from fulfilling his goal.

Levels are fairly well sized, and Remy's basic platforming skills are enough to get him around. There are objects in the world that Remy can lock onto and perform particular actions on. These are things like brooms that are laying against a counter that you have to make Remy run up or a series of small pedestals that you have to jump from and to in order to get across some large, high-up, area. It's really easy to interact with these objects (typically it just involves a jump and a button press, and poof, you land right where you need to) and once you do, you will find yourself quickly recurring all over the place.

Being a platformer fan, I typically don't get frustrated with a game when I have trouble making jumps and have to go a little ways back in order to try the series of obstacles over again. But there were plenty of areas in Ratatouille where a missed jump would set you really far back and you would have to repeat a rather large part of the level just to get back to where you were. This isn't to say that if you miss your jump you die and get reset back to an earlier part. Instead, because of some of the levels' multi-layered design, when you are working your way across some series of high-up platforms, and you miss, you land on the ground. Well, now you have to work your way back to the beginning of your climb and go at it again.

Ratatouille solves this for the most part by giving you objects to interact with that will act as short-cuts and let you skip over most of the tedious jumps, but there were a few times when it felt like these objects weren't frequent enough.

Ratatouille is also sprinkled with mini-games that help to break up the overall platformer feel of the game. These mini-games must be purchased, but they do tend to provide enough entertainment to act as a distraction if you've gotten fed up with some of the more complicated levels.

Disney Pixar's Ratatouille's got a fairly good mix as far as difficulty is concerned. Most of the levels are easy and younger gamers shouldn't have any problems going through the missions. There are a few locations that might take a little work and may lead to frustration, but these are rare.

Since the levels are fairly large and require some doubling back, it can be easy to get lost and/or forget what you need to do. Thankfully, Remy has the ability to sniff-out exactly where he needs to go. If you hold down the (LB) button and you can see a blue wavy "scent" leading you in the general direction you need to go.

Disney Pixar's Ratatouille's controls are pretty basic and any experienced platformer gamer should be able to just pick up this title and play. The analog sticks control your camera and character while (A) lets you jump and (B) lets you interact with those objects that require specific actions (like the broom mentioned in GamePlay).

The (X) button is your attack. If you aren't holding any weapons (like wooden spoons), then you spin around and tail-swipe your opponent, but if you are holding a weapon, you use that instead. And as mentioned in the previous section, the (Left-Bumper) button calls up Scent-Vision and lets you get an idea of which direction your objective is.

Though Ratatouille doesn't offer anything really new to the platforming genre, it is nice to see a movie-licensed game that is actually fun to play. If you are looking for a new game to up your gamerscore and want something that you really don't have to think about (for the most part), then Ratatouille is a good purchase.