Gaming Target - Game Boy: Chicken Run

Written by Derek Noad on December 18, 2000

Review: You'll be running too...away from this game.

I try to be a little compassionate when I review games. Sometimes I try to remember that some people actually enjoy this style of a game. I'm sorry but Chicken Run is just terrible. If you can play and enjoy this game you deserve a medal.

The visuals aren't too bad. It doesn't look horrible on the little screen. Unfortunately the character detail is so bad you can barely tell each character from another. In addition the levels repeat on a seemingly endless loop and you will mostly be in the same looking place with the same texture and scenery.

The sound is what you would expect from a Game Boy title. But then you take that assumption and subtract 50. I don't believe there are sound effects and if there are any its mostly just annoying scratches and beeps. The music is like 20 seconds of terrible "farm" tunes looped until you drive yourself insane.

The gameplay is simply not fun. Who really wants to make a trail of seeds to an exit time after time? So what if you get some new item to dig a hole or block the dog's vision? It just gets really old, really fast. That's all you do, find different ways to lead some chickens to an exit by placing chicken feed in line. Occasionally you can use some special item to avoid some obstacles. Too bad I can't think of anyone who would seriously play through every level of this crap.

Features, they must've never heard of this word before. There's nothing in this game except the story mode. You can only change the difficulty, language (as if there was any dialogue), and the sound options (as if some one wouldn't turn them off every time).

If some one replayed this game they need serious help. I find it so hard just to continue. The password system is one of the worst in gaming history. You need to remember these medals that are weird shapes, so you could either draw them with great detail or do what I did. Every time I got a password I went to the manual and recorded the title of each medal. Plus if you don't write down the password after a level, then you have to beat the next level to get a new one. So if you think you can beat a level but then quit the game will not tell you what the previous password was. There is not enough reason to play this game once, never mind trying to go through it a second time.