It’s time for me to do something very new to me, review a console game based on the hit animated show Phineas and Ferb. A couple months back I did a news article on Majesco Entertainment and Disney Interactive and how they announced their newest game, Phineas and Ferb: Quest for Cool Stuff, was in production. By Majesco’s website description and the trailers released, the game promised to have a multi-episode storyline, the ability to customize the game’s signature asset, Phineas and Ferb’s A.T.T. (All-Terrain Transformation), and finally the most thrilling reveal of them all, the ability to collect sprockets and use them to buy upgrades. I’ll give some of you a moment to collect the socks that blasted off your feat from the revelation that a collectathon game has coins and an upgrade system in it. Joking aside, did Quest for Cool turn out cool?

Before the answer a little contextual story, the game follows Phineas and Ferb on their last days of Summer. While in the backyard as usual pondering what to do they get inspiration from Candace and decide to travel to the Temple of Cool in their newest invention the A.T.T. (All-Terrain Transformation) to find the coolest stuff they can find to display in their backyard Museum of Cool. Why? Just because they can mostly. But there is a flip side to this game as we also focus on Perry the Platypus fighting Dr. Doofenshmirtz as Doofenshmirtz releases his latest creation, the “get-rid-of-cool-stuff-inator” on the Tri-State Area. Will Perry stop Doofenshmirtz? Will Phineas and Ferb collect all the cool stuff that references a plethora of episodes from the show? Find out by watching any episode in the series because the story of the game is just one long episode.

Yeah, when you boast your game to have a “Multi-episode storyline” I kinda expect MULTIPLE EPISODES in the game, not just four different levels tied together with enough plot to fill one episode. But ignoring the false advertising, the story does feel like a Phineas and Ferb storyline and the dialogue definitely fits the tone and style of the show. However, the game just doesn’t have the pace to its gameplay and dialogue system to make any of the writing punchy enough to actually get even a chuckle out of me. It was a nice effort to make this emulate the show but it falls flat thanks to the transfer between mediums.

OK, harped on the story long enough but as we all know a game doesn’t need a great story to be fun. All we need is some intuitive and engaging mechanics and this game has… meh… mechanics. There are three different game styles in this game to show a level of variety. First there is Phineas and Ferb and the A.T.T. It’s as you expect a 2.5D sidescrolling platformer, in the same lane as games like Comic Jumper, you control the A.T.T. with the left stick and you jump with ‘A’ as expected. The only true twist in the game style that with the ‘Y’ and ‘B’ button you are able to switch between the two modes of the A.T.T.; Drill and Pincher. Pincher Mode is the Ferb mode, which allows the robot to wall jump, climb, do a twirl as its ‘X’ attack, and move faster and Drill Mode is… drill mode. The A.T.T. looks like Phineas and you are able to drill through select rocks. PS. Use Drill mode as much as possible for most enemies it is the most effective option to kill them.

The platforming works okay enough, although there is one segment of the game where the platforming really got under my skin. You see the A.T.T. needs to be upgraded throughout the game and to get most of the upgrades you must do this mini game where you collect microchips under a set time limit. This would’ve been fine but I found that, because the 2.5D camera angle is angled up at the platforms, when you reach the top platform you are unable to jump across the top platforms unless you are at the VERY edge of it which resulted in many short jumps and falling down murder holes. This annoyance stretches to other jumps in the game as it becomes not a difficulty in controls but a difficulty in the game’s camera.

In comparison to the mine cart sections however, I’d count those annoying jumps as skips through the tulips. The mine cart section is particularly annoying as on a superficial level it feels completely lifted from Donkey Kong Country and on a root level the camera is garbage. You would think that the camera would just orientate so your character remains in the middle of the screen but NOPE. How about the camera kinda peeters behind your characters movements making it almost impossible to see jumps or enemies until the last second ending in either you getting hit or falling off the tracks into lava. Because of this I just dreaded going on the mine carts every time.

It isn’t all just annoying cameras and crappy mine carts however; the Perry The Platypus sections, which were always my favorite sections in the show, are definitely my favourite section in the game. It has the funniest dialogue and aesthetic as Perry destroys waves and waves of Norm bots, the platforming works very well in this section as the camera follows Perry perfectly, and you collect gnomes. Now that deserves a 10/10 score right there but we gotta be fair with the rest of this sub par game. The controls for Perry’s section are the same as the Phineas and Ferb sections but subtracting the Drill mode and it just works better that way. Without the added tedium of switching back and forth between modes Perry’s sections have a flow to them that isn’t present in the rest of the game.

The last aspect to really talk about is the collectathon mechanics. The point of the game is to find all the rare goodies hidden throughout the levels as well as collect sprockets to buy new paint colours, wheels and sound modules for the A.T.T. All the cool stuff collected is expectedly all references to the show like the Sea King’s Golden Trident, and Meep’s Translating Mustache. Now all the treasures you collect all go into the museum and what I was really expecting the game to do for this was to have a 3D showroom, where you are able to cycle through and see the 3D model representation of all the cool stuff. Unfortunately we just get this list.

I’m sure doing the 3D showroom would have taken quite a bit of time but seriously just making a list with the flat IMAGE of the treasure is just a copout and really disappointing. But that doesn’t even bring in the factor of the sprockets and the A.T.T. customization. There are about 10 different paint colours (the funnier one’s are only purchasable by the end of the game, 6 wheels, and about 10 “sound modules.” Use the sprockets to but the sound modules so you can get 100% completion but NEVER use one other then the default. Sound modules basically make the specific sound whenever your A.T.T. jumps, attacks, and runs. After listening to the “Rubber Duck” sound module for just three minutes you will want to just chuck the game system out the window entirely to silence the game. It gets that irritating.

A side note, there is also plenty of side missions in the game that are given by Baljeet, Buford and Isabelle… only 9 to be exact and all of them are either collect the cool stuff (that you were collecting anyway) and with Buford Time Trials for select stages. The Time Trials do add a much needed shot of adrenaline so in context with the game the side missions are good. It’s just the rest of the game that’s plain mediocre.

Now buying stuff can be very easy to do in this game and by very easy I mean you can break the game’s sprocket system with its own mechanics. The break is that dying in any level in the game isn’t bad in any way. What I found is that once you find a portion in a level with a great amount of sprockets you just collect the sprockets then jump in a murder hole and die. You just go back to the check point and all the sprockets respawn. You can do this forever and the game never punishes you for this. My favourite exploitable level is in Level 3, a Perry the Platypus level where you can kill the norm bots indefinitely and you just rake in sprockets. This turns the game into a grind-fest and even easier then it already was.

My final thoughts, the game is a $30 budget title and it shows, with very uneven controls that work in some places but can be controller throwingly frustrating in others, dialogue that has the same wording as a good episode of Phineas and Ferb but with zero of the comedic timing, and the fact that it is only a 4 HOUR LONG COLLECTHON with zero replay value. If we were back in the days of video rentals I would say this would be fun for the kids for a weekend but that’s even stretching my recommendation. Phineas and Ferb Quest for Cool Stuff fills the time while it lasts but as soon as you place it down it you will forget you played it. This Quest For Cool might just end up just forgotten.