"Don’t let the title fool you, it isn’t all that enthralling"

I know what you're thinking. You looked and saw this is a licensed game, and immediately decided that it had to be a mediocre game without even looking at the score. Well, guess what? You are absolutely correct. This lackluster title is crammed full of average gameplay, boring enemies, uninspiring level layouts, and possesses very little to make it stand out of the crowd. Then again, that shouldn't be any big surprise. Yawn. Of course, it isn't without its decent features, but they are far from enough to make up for the general gaping hole of blah that will constantly be hovering over the player. Where it succeeds and where it fails are definite indicators of why this game can never excel above being flat out average, and without further ado we shall now take a stab at these points.

We start out with Quest for the Shaven Yak's (now to be referred to as QSY) playable characters, obviously being Ren and Stimpy. They are depicted well in their sprite forms, looking everything like the cartoon characters would. Until they begin to move. Their animations, from attacking to jumping to walking, all lack much intensity of life. They don't make any odd expressions or do anything incredibly interesting, they just do what they are supposed to do. There's not even have a hit animation, and instead they just flash momentarily when they take damage. They don't teeter and totter when at the edge of a ledge. They just… are. Seriously, you can find early NES games with equivalent or better movement and attacking animations than in QSY. Even worse in this regard are the hosts of grunt enemies hanging around. Most of them feature rather drab designs and half of them don't even have animations. They just seem to mindlessly float across the screen with the same dull glazed over expression in there eyes. This might be forgivable in a normal game for the Game Gear, but come on guys. This is supposed to be a Ren and Stimpy game. It's supposed to be lively and amusing, but even the characters don't seem capable of pulling that off. It really detaches from the sort of feel you would come to expect from such a game. The bosses are done a bit better, but for the most part they aren't any better than our lead characters.

The maps you'll be trodding through won't be much better. They all feature the usual “scroll from left to right for the entire level” shtick, and in appearance they are strikingly lame. You get five levels: your standard forest, desert, swamp, mountain, and icy tundra types. They are draw in the cartoon's style, but all the same they have no style to them at all. For instance, the forest level features simply a green path for you to walk on with rather normal looking trees in the background and a blue sky. That's it. There won't be eyes randomly peering out at you, or randomly strewn dead trees, or anything particularly eye grabbing or unusual that you would come to expect from Ren and Stimpy. It doesn't help that once you reach the swamp level, it looks like they took the exact same foreground and slapped a slightly different background onto it.

All is not completely lost with the level designs, however. There are branching paths that the player may choose to take, usually going rather high or down into the ground. Depending on what character you use, you will only have access to certain paths with the help of a “special” move. Ren's special move is an extra high jump with a bit of lag added to it, and Stimpy's is a heavy stomping move that can break through weak parts of the floors and bridges you will be running across. Each path is a bit different and only one character will be able to access certain paths, but unfortunately there usually aren't any great advantages to taking any of them. Most of the time they just contain not quite as many enemies, or at the most lead to a 1-Up. They don't tend to shorten the lengths of the levels to any great degree nor increase their size, and due to the extreme lack of power ups and ease of the game they feel quite unnecessary. They're a nice touch, but they really don't serve as anything more than a slight change of scenery.

That leads me to my next point. QSY is easy. Quite easy. This is due in part to the fact that you only have one method of dealing damage to enemies, and that's with projectiles. Jumping on or near enemies will result in you taking damage. There's no difference between the power or velocity of the characters' attacks either. Ren's yellow toothbrushes move just as fast and hit just as hard as Stimpy's minuscule hair balls. Therefore, almost all of the time you can simply keep a distance and barrage stuff into oblivion. It doesn't help that over seventy percent of the enemies do nothing aside from slowly creep across the screen towards you, even in the last stage of the game. The difficulty bar in essence is never raised, and it is quite easy to blaze through the game in little more than an hour or two. Despite that, this game even features a code system, so that you may start at the beginning of whatever stage you just made it to whenever you want. I suppose this is good and fine for the extremely casual gamer, but it would seem like almost a joke to anyone else. Why do you need passwords for a game that can easily be beat in a single sitting?

The game doesn't completely fail, however. There is much to this game that is unimpressive, but at least they nailed one aspect down for QSY. That would be the fluidity of the controls. It is essential for any game where your options for dealing with enemies is either to throw something at them, jump over them, or duck under them, and QSY does manage to accomplish this. Even Ren's super jump with its laggy start up time isn't too difficult to adjust to due the highly responsive and consistent ability to perform it. Your characters do what you want when you want them to, simple as that.

The sound department also isn't completely awful either. While the sound effects are indeed clogged with a flat array of beeps and blips, the music manages quite nicely. There are a few familiar sounds present, and the unrecognizable pieces all possess a feel and flow reminiscent of the show, helping to set a partial mood where the visuals fail miserably.

While ease of control and good music are nice, it isn't enough to help a game where all else isn't even noteworthy or otherwise is flat out boring. Dull graphics combined with braindead enemy AI and lack of variety keep QSY firmly anchored in the sea of the average. I feel the programmers were going for a game for the young here, and for them it may work. The low difficulty and the mild resemblance to the show may be enough for them. Even then, however, QSY is only good enough for the hour or so it takes to beat it, and that's it. Nothing there to make you want to replay it. Everyone else looking for either a challenge or inspiring gameplay may as well look elsewhere, as they certainly won't find these elements here. Ho hum.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 07/02/04