The best thing I can compare this game to is Ice Age Scrats Nutty Adventure. It's a low budget licensed platformer that obviously wasn't given a lot of time or money for development, doesn't really control well, but you can tell the developers put their all into it and that's really respectable. The animations are nice as they constantly have The Grinch smirking, dangling his legs as he tries to pull himself up from a ledge, and much more. The Grinch design himself is also pretty good. Definitely better than whatever the hell they did with the Illumination version of him. Gameplay is pretty standard. Your usual licensed 2D platformer complete with a limited number of enemies that are reused every level, floaty jumping, and a smattering of collectibles for you to pick up. Puzzles pieces that are picked up in levels can be used to upgrade The Grinch and give him more health, new weapons, and even a snowboard. It actually reminds me of the Konami Grinch game on PSOne and Dreamcast since you are tasked with assembling a quick puzzle in order to unlock these upgrades just like in that game. It's a fun thing to look forward to. I also respect the fact that they chose to presentall the dialogue and narration in the game by the fact that everything rhymes, just like in the book. The game also has some really neat extras that really feels like the dev team went just a little bit further than they needed to. One of these extras is the narrator of the game just reading the whole book of How the Grinch Stole Christmas to you while the other named Slideshow is a collection of the original book sketches that Seuss drew himself. Includes notes from him and everything. Legitimately a really neat bonus. I definitely wouldn't recommend this game at its $40/$50 price tag. Hell no, but if you can manage to rent it for a weekend from your local library or rental service, you can get through the game in a couple of hours. It has enough neat things to balance out its jank.

Reviewed on Jan 02, 2024


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