Tarzan: Return to the Jungle on the GameBoy Advance is the video game adaptation to the very watchable spin-off cartoon to the classic Disney hit Tarzan. The game is very hit-and-miss, it does some things good, and other things... not so much. Let's get right down to it.

The graphics:
The visuals aren't half bad. It's crisp, the animations are very fluid, and it's very colourful. Tarzan: Return to the Jungle has a quite nice, if largely compressed, intro scene which is taken straight from the TV series. So that's impressive. The only thing I can nag about a little, is that some of the animation styles are a little inconsistent. The enemy leopards are actually quite vicious-looking, while the alligators you come across are much more silly-looking. What is this, a children's cartoon!? Oh, wait...

The sound:
The sound is really good. From the TV-quality sound from the intro scene to the random SFX. It's very clean, obviously there has been a lot of dedication to this aspect of the game.

The addictiveness:
Even if it has its cons, Tarzan: Return to the Jungle is quite a lot of fun! Collecting things is always fun especially when you get rewarded when you're good at it, and the visuals combined with the music make for a nice atmosphere. Sure, it has got its weak points, like bad tutorials and stiff controls, but I managed to overlook this.

The story:
I, uh.... I'm having my doubts about what to rate this aspect of the game. It's often not very clear as to what Tarzan: Return to the Jungle is about. Stages have you doing all kinds of things that aren't tied to each other to begin with. One stage has you just swinging and tree sliding to your destination, another has you swimming through deep water for whatever reason, and another has you being chased after by rampaging boars. There's not much to work towards. Now, as this game spawned from the TV series with each new episode telling an entirely different story, I guess this makes a little sense. But other than Terk, there are no characters you could like, or antagonists you could potentially dislike, etc. For a video game, you need a goal to work towards, and this just doesn't work in a TV series kind of way.

The depth:
It's pretty standard-issue for a sidescrolling platformer. You jump from platform to platform in a Metroid-like fashion. With this, I mean to say that your destination isn't through a one-way-street to the right, it takes you everywhere. While this does make for quite big stages to run, jump, and swing through, this could very easily result in you getting lost in the stage, as was always the case in the early Metroid games. The game doesn't come with a map, so good luck finding your way! Other than that, the game mostly does everything the way it should. It incorporates a '3 lives' system, and places extra lives all around the big maps. The game also has 40 to 100 bananas scattered throughout each stage as collectibles. If you find all bananas in a stage, you'll be rewarded with an extra live. And, I do appreciate the autosave feature. I haven't played many GameBoy Advance games that had this.

The difficulty:
When you get the hang of it, Tarzan: Return to the Jungle is not difficult. However, that is when you get the hang of it. Which will probably take a long time, since Tarzan controls very stiff to begin with, and this game features some very lousy explanation to how to play the game. Not many GameBoy Advance games had actual tutorials in their game, so the idea is actually pretty good, but it's not executed very well. The tutorials are scattered throughout the game, and sometimes, the tutorials give you the wrong instructions on how to perform some of Tarzan's moves. For example, other than what the game tells you, you don't need to hold down the 'B' button in order to climb or swing, a simple press on the button is enough. It may sound like I'm nitpicking, but try holding down the button like the game tells you to, it's gonna hurt your hand dude! So, when you got the hang of the controls and ignore or forget most of what the tutorial taught you, the game is still a little challenging, especially in the first few levels, where you have no way to defend yourself against enemies. You need to avoid them, but that's easier said than done. Enemies have no clear pattern, and are unpredictable. This paired with the stiff jumping controls...

Tarzan: Return to the Jungle has its flaws. It has stiff controls, badly made tutorials and sometimes a little confusing level design. But if you can look away from that (and put effort into finding your way out), you'll find a quite charming platform-adventure for the GameBoy Advance. Try it out!

Pros:

• It has an autosave feature

• Very good sound overall

• A lot of places to discover aside from the path to the destination

Cons:

• Bad tutorials

• Dodging enemies as kid Tarzan is difficult

• Confusing level design