Like many games recently, Disney's Atlantis: The Lost Empire (heretoafter known as Atlantis) uses cel-shaded character styles instead of the traditional, more polygonal types of characters. Even though the game is a PSOne title, it still looks quite nice; the character animations are fairly fluid and they look like animation instead of the output of the PSX's rendering unit. The environments, unfortunately, aren't quite up to snuff; walls tend to be mottled and undetailed, and the world itself is a little too cavernous with not quite enough visual oomph. It's certainly not the prettiest game I've ever seen on the PSOne, but it's nowhere near the ugliest either.

As for the sound, the game ranges from middling to solid. The sound effects are short and repetitious; you'll grow tired of Milo's boomerang thwack rather quickly. Footsteps are a nice effect, but they too can grow frustrating. The voice acting, on the other hand, is surprisingly solid; Milo sounds a lot like Michael J. Fox, who voiced the part in the movie. Impressive. There's quite a bit of voice in the game, too, so it's not like it's just in the little snippets. The inevitable scenes from the movie interspersed between each level look decent and sound decent, and they're decidedly more in-context than the ones from, say, The Emperor's New Groove, but they're nothing to write home about either.

And, unfortunately, Atlantis falls prey to the same plague that's been hitting all of Disney's recent PSOne games--it's an imitation of the gameplay pioneered in games like Spyro and Croc, and it never reaches the level of excitement or immersivity of those titles. While Atlantis adds a number of adventure game elements to the game, the frustrating controls and lack of real excitement in the game make it one that's best left to the fans, or people who simply adore the genre.

See, I'm one of those. Even mediocre platform adventure titles tickle my spine, and as I played Atlantis and found myself enjoying the experience, I realized that it wasn't because it was a good game--it was because I'm strange. Er. What I'm trying to tell you is that Atlantis has many of the accoutrements of the genre--you've got the easy-to-find dealies to collect, the slightly-harder-to-find dealies to collect, and the pain-in-the-butt dealies to collect, each of which does something nice for you. You've got puzzles and jumps and doors and so on, and while they all require a few 'challenging' moments, it's nothing that a ten-year-old couldn't figure out.

As you play Atlantis, you'll switch between controlling a number of characters, such as Audrey with her 'flare' gun and Moliere with his headset. Each character has a particular ability or two that they're good at: Milo can climb and decipher Atlantean writings, Audrey can fix things, Vinny can blow stuff up, and so on. This part is very reminiscent of Fur Fighters, where you have to figure out the proper character to use to progress. You can switch characters at any radio, although which characters you can choose depends on the situation. They all share the same life meter, which is sort of lame, but eh.

Other than the typical collecting fare, you have to do a number of simple 'puzzles' to progress in the game. This could mean flipping a switch, finding items and putting them in the right locations, or occasionally combining two items into one more useful object. These sort of mild inventory manipulation puzzles never really feel out of place, but they help push Atlantis into even more slow-moving territory.

And trust me, Atlantis is slow. The worlds you'll adventure in are generally vast, but there are large stretches of walkway and cavernous passages that have nothing but the ambient sounds and the crunching of your footsteps. Indeed, you won't even meet your first real enemies until you're almost all the way through the second level. While some may prefer this sort of easy-going adventure style, it makes the world seem a little emptier than it should.

The game also relies too much on jumping puzzles, which with a wonky camera makes it more frustrating than it should. It's a relatively short game, but not too terribly short; a weekend rental may or may not find the kids beating the game, depending on how heavily they play it and how good their timing is with jumping.

While Atlantis itself is easy enough, some of the jumps you have to land to progress (or get some of the 'hidden' objects) can be downright frustrating. I missed many a jump because I pressed 'jump' just the tiniest bit too soon, and my character can't be bothered to grab the side and climb up for me. Ugh. This is poor form. None of the puzzles are particularly challenging, and finding all of the 'hidden' stuff is generally pretty trivial too.

The controls in Atlantis are pretty simple, although they're more complex than the usual Disney platformer. You've got hand-to-hand, use item (which is usually another weapon), jump, 'discover' (which is how you turn switches / read Atlantean / etc.), aim and duck. You can also control the camera by using the second stick or the shoulder buttons. Unfortunately, the camera has a mind of its own, making some of the annoying jumps all that more bothersome; once you move the camera to where you want it, it'll snap back as soon as you touch the stick to move. Argh. I've already complained about the jumps; it would have been nice to be able to go to the save screen without load times as well, but that's relatively minor.

PS2: Do not use the Fast disc setting with Atlantis, as it makes all of the speech in the game go hyper. The graphics smoothing, on the other hand, makes the game look even more cartoonish, and I definitely recommend using it. While it doesn't miraculously change the game into a PS2 title, it still makes it look considerably 'sharper'.

The final result is this: Disney's Atlantis: The Lost Empire is amusing for a while, and it has a few neat game mechanics, but in the end it's basically a retread of the same type of game we've been playing for years. With annoying control issues and not enough action going on, many people will be left cold by Atlantis' efforts to warm your heart. If you're a fan of the genre, or your kid really liked the movie, it's definitely worth a try; it's not a bad title, just not particularly outstanding either.