The Suite Life of Zack & Cody: Tipton Trouble for Nintendo DS is a game that exists. It's sort of like The Lost Vikings in that you have two characters with unique abilities, and it's a platformer with puzzle elements, fairly basic stuff.

First, let's address the fact that this is a DS game, relatively early in the console's life, so it had to shoehorn in the touch screen and even microphone that I forgot exists. Most actions are done via a touch screen, except for jumping by Zack, which is mapped to B. Might as well have made it a touch screen action as well, because changing your hand position for that and then back for touch screen shenanigans, which includes switching between brothers by the way. You really aren't going to use the rest of the lettered buttons and shoulder buttons, and a select button? Although I played this on PC via an emulator and I had to change my hands from mouse and arrow keys to arrow keys and other buttons, and while it wasn't too discomfortable, I can't imagine it feeling too good on the original hardware either.

Anyway, you control both brothers and have them both reach the end. Zack is Parkour! guy, in that he can jump... and that's pretty much it. He'll gain the ability to climb horizontally on pipes and even walljump, but he's just for platforming, while Cody can't jump with that heavy vacuum cleaner, but he can use it in puzzles and combat. Let's get combat out of the way, because it's easily the weakest aspect of the game. I mean, can you imagine strong combat in The Suite Life of Zack & Cody game? The issue is that you can defeat most of the enemies from a distance, like how you get to abuse dogs or rats from a distance with pies, but you have to get closer to other enemies and they can get really annoying, like bats that you can't duck under for some reason even though it seemed like the hit shouldn't have registered. Basically, the enemies are either too easy or too annoying. The boss fights are at least kinda decent, and unlike the GBA game, you have three this time. Although they all have the same formula, where Cody is in a circular arena and must lower the enemy's HP on a colored platform, and the with Zack and his Parkour! abilities get to the appropriately colored switch to damage the boss for real. Funny thing is that I managed to softlock in the first boss battle by changing from Zack to Cody. The camera locked up and I couldn't do anything, but take damage. And I was supposed to hit it once to end it. Some of the platforming can be pretty frustrating when you fall off or you die and have to redo a section, although the game is fairly generous on checkpoints it seems. The camera always shows you what's ahead, and changes directoin quickly which can be distracting, you can't see what's behind unless you turn, but turning isn't instantaneous, which annoyed me a few times when I wanted the camera to face the other way. The puzzles are mostly basic, though there were a couple clever ones I thought, and the platforming is kinda decent. But the game is still fairly mediocre gameplay wise. At times you have to help brothers like how Zack has to help Cody reach a higher ledge or make Cody blow up and carry Zack to reach a platform further away with more pointless touch screen activities. There's a skate section where you're on a time limit and have to change your position, duck to move faster and jump over obstacles that slow you down, all of this is exclusively via a touch screen. I sucked at these and I still managed to beat them. Well, I did have to re-do the second one but still, it's kinda alright. And there's a ship section that uses the microphone to blow at the ship to move it forward and steer it with L and R, and I did try using a microphone, and it was very easy, maybe these sections are harder on real hardware but they didn't pose much of a challenge to me. No touch screen this time interestingly enough. Overall, the gameplay is pretty mediocre all around.

The graphics, honestly I think look pretty decent, I like the 3D envoirements, that you 2.5D platform through, the models and textures look decent, and the music, it's pretty good, but I already heard the same soundtrack in the GBA Zack & Cody game. This game was released earlier so one can assume that the tracks were composed for this DS game first and then squeezed into GBA, but I want to believe the DS version just lazily reused the OST that was commissioned for the GBA game. Although the music does sound a little less compressed and has additional instruments. Regardless, it sounds good, but I would've liked to hear something else for variety... unless that meant a bad OST.

Overall, this game is fairly mediocre, but to be honest, it wasn't a complete borefest, sure it had a few frustrating moments, but I'll take a mediocre game over a bad or a boring game. This is simply a game that exists, but there are far worse games that also exist.