Review: Rugrats: Adventures in Gameland gave us nostalgia, but not much else

I jumped into Rugrats: Adventures in Gameland with the best of intentions and with so much excitement. I knew going into it that it wasn’t going to be a cozy game, but I expected nostalgia to soften the edges.

What I didn’t anticipate is that this game not only looked like games from the ’90s, but it plays like a ’90s game too. The level of difficulty left a lot to be desired.

Rugrats: Adventures in Gameland; a nostalgic masterpiece or a cash grab?

I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not the best at platformers. I knew going into Rugrats: Adventures in Gameland that I was likely going to be frustrated. However, I didn’t expect to be quite this frustrated in the easiest setting.

When you boot up the game, you can play as a newborn (easy), baby (normal), or big kid (hard). The only thing this seemed to affect is lives and where you spawn. In newborn, you don’t have infinite lives, but you don’t lose too much progress when you die. And you will die.

So, let’s start with the good and get into, the seemingly endless, bad. When it comes to graphics and music, this game is spot on. The different levels are introduced in the old way that episode titles were displayed, the music is the same, and the graphics let you play in a modern style or classic 8-bit.

I wish I had more than one paragraph for good things.

In old games from the 90s, you’ll likely remember the unforgivable platformers like Lion King, Aladdin, and Duck Tales. Of the three, I’d say that it closely resembles Duck Tales. Every level is just a series of platforming challenges and they’re not exactly easy.

Even my platform-loving husband took a stab at trying out Rugrats: Adventures in Gameland and had to stop playing it because of the relentless barrage of enemies.

See, the problem isn’t the design of the levels, it’s the unfairness of the enemies combined with the floating controls. Even if you do kill something, you better not leave the screen or they’ll respawn.

Not only do enemies respawn, but they cluster in ways that are designed to kill you. In the dream level, you have floating lips fluttering across the screen going several directions and you’re trying to avoid them while riding on moving carpets. If you get hit by one, you’re likely going to be hit by the others in frustrating succession. 

A baby’s gotta do what a baby’s gotta do… but this ain’t it.

Any time you’re hit, you’re given the tiniest moment of invincibility, but it’s not enough to save you. It’s incredibly easy to be caught in a death trap. Oftentimes, I’d lose three health in the span of 10 seconds just because I got into a tight spot where I was barraged.

Since you only have 4 lives, I would start the level at full health and be down to just 1 in seconds. If you lose all of your lives, you’re reset. This isn’t some Turtles in Time cheat code though, you don’t respawn in place. You respawn at some unseen checkpoint that could be several panels from where you died.

It’s not a deal breaker, but with playing newborn, you’d think the respawn would be more forgiving.

Now, you can combat this a bit by switching out the babies, but you’re oftentimes trading out for worse abilities. I found myself leaning toward playing as Chuckie because he had the best jump. Each character has a scale of 1-4 on how high they jump or how easy it is for them to pick up things.

So, if you are down to one hit as Chuckie and then move to someone who doesn’t jump as well, you have to get creative or risk it with Chuckie if the jump can’t be made with the characters left over.

There are items like cookies that help by giving you an extra life that I found useful for boss battles, but they were few and far between.

So, what’s the goal here? Well, you’re meant to be collecting Reptar coins across these different lands so that you can open the Reptar Door. I’d love to tell you what happens when you open it, but frankly, I never got that far. 

This feels more like a ‘Sponsorbillery than a game…

To me, it was just one slog of platforming levels after the next ending in a boss battle. It’s a pretty standard setup, but man, I hate boss battles. I like that each boss seemed to have different ways to defeat them, but the controls really try to mess you up at the most crucial of times.

I wanted to love Rugrats: Adventures in Gameland; I really did, but I wish they’d gone a different route. I can appreciate a platformer to relive the good ol’ days, but in this day and age, it’s just not enough to have punishing levels. You need substance; you need more.

I’d have loved to run around the house or outside completing quests and exploring. But, that just wasn’t the game we got. The levels were new and unfamiliar; the only ties to nostalgia were the cut scenes and the characters.

Maybe some hardcore Rugrats fan will be more eagle-eyed than I was and can see familiar things in the levels, but it might as well have been any platformer.

Ultimately, Rugrats: Adventures in Gameland was an incredible miss and I’d only recommend it if you love platformers with the zest of nostalgia.

If you want to try out Rugrats: Adventures in Gameland, you can get it on Steam, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation, and Xbox. If you want to check out our latest review, you can check out the one we did on TCG Card Shop Simulator.